Last of the Cold War Spies

by Roland Perry

  Martin, relieved to have what he saw as a confession, accepted Blunt’s assurance that he had not spied since 1945. At subsequent meetings, he was also pleased to see that responses and statements by Blunt and Straight were the same except for a few anomalies.

  Blunt, the more “senior” KGB man, went further. He admitted recruiting Leo Long, which Straight claimed he suspected. Blunt also named John Cairncross. Straight had mentioned Alister Watson, without indicating directly that he was a spy. Blunt had added to suspicions about Watson. This tallied with Philby’s “confession” in Beirut to British intelligence’s Nicholas Elliott.

  Thus three men pointed the finger at Watson. All research by others, and my own investigation, found Watson was innocent. He had been recruited and was at points in his career as a scientist in place in government employment deemed highly secret. But when the pressure was on, Watson could not deliver. He refused to pass on intelligence, much to the anger of his KGB controls and the contempt of fellow members of the ring—hence their willingness to cause him more angst by suggesting that he was a KGB spy.

  Philby had also claimed that Blunt was not a spy. In the excitement of the early apparent breakthrough, Martin and his partner in the investigation, Peter Wright, grabbed at the correlations and ignored the anomalies.

  The first seed of doubt came from Wright’s initial encounter with Blunt. His tape-recorder broke down during a question-and-answer session. Wright knelt to thread a loose tape spool, which had jammed the recorder. Blunt remarked to Martin: “Isn’t it fascinating to watch a technical expert do his stuff?”5

  Wright looked up and glared. He had never met Blunt before. The comment showed Wright that Blunt knew who he was. Rothschild, according to KGB and British intelligence sources, was most likely the one who informed Blunt that he would be interrogated by Wright, a scientist from MI5’s technical section. Rothschild had befriended Wright since 1958, going out of his way to make contact with him and—along with Tess—assist his work at MI5. Wright had divulged every secret he knew at MI5 to the Rothschilds.6

  The ring members, from Blunt and the Rothschilds in the United Kingdom; to Cairncross in Italy; to Philby and their controller, Modin, in Moscow, were combining in a major deception to avoid detection of their widespread activities. They had all continued well into the Cold War.

  When the months slipped by, MI5 began to wonder if Blunt was divulging all. They suspected he was covering up. Martin questioned Long and suggested he would not be prosecuted if he cooperated. With this virtual offer of immunity, he did admit to passing Blunt information during the war, but nothing more. He too denied spying for the Russians in the Cold War. Cairncross, who had been suspected and accused by British intelligence of being a KGB agent in 1951, made similar admissions when Martin visited him in Rome. Once more it was suggested he would not face prosecution if he confessed.

  Further doubts began to seep into the investigators’ minds. They had dead agents named by Blunt and Straight. The only new, living names were Long and Cairncross. The latter had been known, for all practical purposes, for thirteen years. Like Long, he admitted to little. The only person to verify how little was Blunt. It was a small haul after such promise was offered when Straight spoke up. The other concern that began to dawn on MI5’s tenacious sleuths was the fact that even if they uncovered something sensational, the traitors could never be prosecuted. Wright was first to express the thought that no one could be charged because, for example, Long would call Blunt as a witness. This would lead to questions about why the Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures had not been himself charged. Wright and Martin realized prosecution of any member of the Cambridge ring was an impossibility.

  This frustrated them. They tried ways around the roadblock of immunity. First, they began a good cop, bad cop routine in interviews with Blunt. This was done in the hope of squeezing out more that could lead to disclosures of such significance that they could not be ignored. Martin appeared friendly and reasonable, while Wright became “nasty.”7 Yet MI5’s director-general, Roger Hollis, warned against pressuring Blunt too much. He said he feared he might defect. This would be more embarrassment for British intelligence and the government. But Hollis, a true Whitehall bureaucrat, knew that Blunt had to be protected.

  The point was driven home when Wright was summoned to attend a briefing at Buckingham Palace by Michael Adeane, the queen’s private secretary. “He assured me that the Palace was willing to cooperate in any enquires the [intelligence] Service thought fit,” Wright wrote in his book, Spycatcher. “The Queen,” he said, “has been fully informed about Sir Anthony, and is quite content for him to be dealt with in any way which gets at the truth.” There was only one caveat. “From time to time,” said Adeane, “you may find Blunt referring to an assignment he undertook on behalf of the Palace—a visit to Germany at the end of the war. Please do not pursue this matter. Strictly speaking, it is not relevant to considerations of national security.”8

  Restricted by this information and by directions from their superiors, Wright and Martin battled on. Blunt’s flat was bugged. Recorded conversation made it clear he was aware of the bugging. They followed the leads provided by Blunt and Cairncross, which led to other “suspects.” All were found to be inconsequential; some were investigated and cleared. Frustration and doubts grew about the veracity of what MI5 had been told from the beginning. They began to consider ways of putting more pressure on Blunt.

  Straight tried selling Happy and Hopeless, his thinly veiled personal short novel about a sexless love affair. Publishers rejected it. Straight was not surprised.

  It must have been a disappointment to Knopf. He would have been puzzled by Straight’s lack of will to write after the considerable research and construction efforts by Straight and his editors put into the first two novels.

  Straight tinkered with the structure but came to see it as a failure. Distractions such as a trip with Rose to London and Dartington in mid-May 1964, and thoughts of leaving Weynoke, his Virginia farm, took him away from his writing.

  Straight returned to Virginia mid-year and thought about leaving, but not selling, Weynoke and moving to Georgetown. The Straights liked the look of Jackie Kennedy’s N Street house, where she had lived since the assassination. She had purchased it for $175,000. The agents, J. F. Begg Inc. Realty Co., were responding to journalists’ queries when they said it was worth “in the vicinity of $265,000” because of “improvements.” The owner before Jackie (Jimmy Gibson) had originally asked $325,000 for the place. He had sold it to her for the much lower price of $175,000, perhaps, as suggested at the time, out of compassion. She could hardly have put it back on the market six months after moving in for twice the purchase figure. Hence the impression from the agent of the compromise price and the excuse of the modification costs.

  It had been built in 1825 by Thomas Beall, son of Ninian Beall, and was of historic importance. At $265,000, and anything less, it was considered a bargain. Straight was well aware of Jackie’s intention to leave Washington and avoid the stares of endless tourists wandering N Street with their cameras. No other buyers, it seemed, had a chance. Straight’s discreet, close, personal relationship with Jackie meant that the home was his for the taking. Bin Straight flew down from Chilmark to Washington in early August to view the house, which she liked. Straight wondered if the Kennedy presence might haunt it and make it a somber place. He was uncertain about moving in. But he was looking at an opportunity he would find difficult to refuse.

  In early September 1964, he received a request for a further meeting with Martin, this time in London. Straight, wishing to appear as the ever-willing informer, obliged by flying to London mid-September. Martin met him at the Elmhirst family apartment in Upper Brook Street. They walked the short distance to an MI5-owned house on South Audley Street. Martin offered him a drink and then told him how Blunt had “given up and confessed.” He made it sound as if MI5 were satisfied with what had been divulged. But, Martin told him, there were just a
few divergences in their two stories. He was almost apologetic about asking Straight if he would meet with Blunt. Would it be too painful for him, Martin inquired. Straight replied he would do whatever he was asked. That pleased Martin. He had already prepared Blunt for a meeting at his Portman Square flat. Martin asked Straight to get there fifteen minutes early so they could have a few words in private.9

  Straight walked to his appointment on time, pressed the button to Blunt’s flat, and then walked up the stairs. Blunt was at the entrance to his flat and Straight found him, as ever, thin and pale. But to Straight’s surprise, he said, Blunt wasn’t hostile.10

  They were aware that the flat was bugged. Whatever they said to each other would be staged with that in mind. Blunt took him into the living room.

  First, there was Straight’s version, in which he claimed Blunt said to him: “I just wanted to tell you: thank God you did what you did!” He added: “I was sure that it all would become known sooner or later. I couldn’t muster up the strength to go to the authorities myself. When they said that you had told them your story, it lifted a heavy burden from my shoulders. I was immensely relieved.”

  “I’m glad that you told me that,” Straight claimed he replied. “I assumed that you would be bitter.”

  “I am curious about one thing,” Straight claimed Blunt said. “Why did you act when you did?”

  “Because of the arts,” Straight allegedly replied. “Because our government finally decided to support the arts. Kennedy was going to make me head of his new arts agency. That forced me to face up to it at last.”11

  The MI5 technicians listening to this tape would have been baffled by Straight’s version of events. Straight was suggesting that he had not been driven by loyalty or his oft-professed anticommunism. No sense of patriotism or an attempt to limit the huge damage done by the Cambridge ring during World War II, the Cold War, or Korea had driven him to confess. Not even late recognition of the iniquities of Stalin and Stalinism moved him. No, it was . . . the arts.

  “The real question that has to be answered,” Straight claimed that he said, “is, Why didn’t I act long ago?”

  “I see,” Blunt was alleged to have said. “We always wondered how long it would be before you turned us in.”

  Straight’s version fitted the line in his autobiography that portrayed him as a victim caught in a web of intrigue. He was forever the insect struggling to slip away from his past.

  With the mysteries of how and why allegedly cleared up, Straight claimed the discussion drifted to art.

  “We were talking about Dughet and Cezanne,” Straight recalled, “when the doorbell rang and Arthur Martin walked in.”12

  The three men then talked for an hour. Straight said in his memoirs, published nineteen years later, in 1983, that he could recall little of the discussion. This seemed odd when recall of his version of the private chat with Blunt before Martin arrived was perfect. Nevertheless, he did claim to remember one thing. Blunt was concerned the story would become public. It would completely destroy him. By contrast Straight said he was prepared for it. In other words the reader of this account was meant to be left with the impression that Straight was the open character of the two. He was the strong one willing to face his past no matter what the consequences.

  Straight’s version of events seemed a contrivance too far. It suggests that he was the near-innocent party who never actually spied for the KGB. The line he attributed to Blunt—We always wondered how long it would be before you turned us in—makes it seem as if there is a big difference between Straight and the others—Blunt and Burgess. In other words, they were the espionage agents, when he wasn’t, when in reality Straight’s spying and agent of influence activity had been just as strong and over a longer period than the others.

  What started as a collusion and an attempt to cover up Straight’s work had backfired on Blunt. He had been painted more as the major spy than he wished, while Straight was portraying himself as an innocent.

  In 1980, after being exposed as a spy, Blunt had a different version of the meeting. Yes, they did discuss art, but that was it. Straight avoided speaking of his FBI confession.

  In 1983, Straight sent Blunt a copy of his autobiography inscribed, “Anthony from Michael 1983. Too bad—that we don’t have more than one life to live.” Blunt put a large “No!” in the margin next to the account of the 1964 meeting with a string of question marks and disclaimers concerning Straight’s account. At the bottom of the page Blunt wrote: “We actually talked about a painting by Bellaye that he’d bought.”

  Arthur Martin thought that Blunt’s account was more credible but judged the meeting a failure from MI5’s point of view. “They must have had something in common when they were undergraduates,” he said, “but that had gone by 1964.”

  A second meeting arranged by Peter Wright later took place at the MI5 safe house on South Audley Street. The FBI and MI5 doubted Straight’s testimony concerning the last time he saw Michael Greenberg. Blunt was there to assist his attempt to recall “facts.” Martin was absent; Wright or another MI5 agent was present.

  Straight claimed that he last saw Greenberg accidentally (similar to the coincidences of him “bumping into” Burgess and Blunt in the postwar years) outside the White House in 1942. But the FBI had kept a surveillance on Greenberg. He visited Straight early in 1946 at the New York offices of The New Republic. Straight said he couldn’t remember the visit but maintained Greenberg was probably looking for a job. The FBI version was that Greenberg was running around New York and Washington warning members of communist networks that they should destroy evidence, look out for wire taps, and watch for tails since Elizabeth Bentley had confessed. After this, the FBI (accurately) put Straight in the category of still active, or as an agent of influence. This meant that he was seen as a spy—a sleeper always ready to be reactivated.13 After the safe house meetings in 1964, Straight said that Blunt was pleased that the matter had been resolved. Blunt disagreed with Straight’s neat resolution. It ended like a traffic accident, with witnesses giving different versions of events. However, the result was the same for Blunt, who was injured in reputation beyond repair. Not long after this meeting, his twenty-year era as Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures was terminated. According to former members of the royal household staff, the queen had been uncomfortable about Blunt for some time, even though she knighted him in 1957. Apart from his investiture, contact with her was avoided. Yet she had been obliged by her governments and intelligence services, and perhaps loyalty to her father’s memory, to keep him on. The queen mother had been better disposed toward Blunt because of his secret missions for her husband, King George VI. Royal courtiers from 1948 to 1965 had whispered about Blunt and called him “our Russian spy.”14

  The interrogation of Straight didn’t end in 1964. For the next eleven years he was summoned for more discussions. As the willing informer, he was obligated to attend. The MI5 investigators came in pairs and met him in his room at the Connaught, where he stayed in preference to the family flat. He kept his “confession” and questioning secret from all his family. Whitney would have been aware of it, but he too kept the secret.

  MI5 reviewed his years with Blunt and his control Michael Green and delved back into the communist cells at Cambridge. British intelligence gave him photos to look at and lists of names of public servants, fellow students, and others. Straight assisted by dividing them into nonmembers of the party, student activists like him, hard-core members of the party, and so-called moles. Straight was asked to group moles into those who would take up “non-sensitive” professions, such as law, and those who would move into jobs in, for instance, government weapons research. From there, they would gain access to “sensitive” material.

  MI5 followed up Straight’s tidbits thrown out every so often over the years. Like the cumulative clues given by Philby, the Rothschilds, Blunt, Cairncross, Long, and others, they led nowhere. The ring’s long and broad disinformation campaign was working well.
r />   Straight was stunned in October 1964 to learn that his friend Mary Meyer, formerly President Kennedy’s lover, had been murdered while on her daily stroll along the Canal towpath not far from her Georgetown studio. The allegation was that she had been raped by a black and then shot after she resisted. These were the bare facts, although the black charged with her murder, Raymond Crump, was later acquitted. According to witnesses, a black was seen in the area, but there were doubts over whether it was Crump. Mary Meyer was shot in a way reminiscent of a professional killing, with one bullet to the brain and another to the aorta. There were signs of a struggle. Over the years, conspiracy theories developed around the slaying. Stories circulated about her diaries. They were held by the CIA’s James Angleton before Tony, Mary’s sister, burnt them. The conspiracy theorists wondered if the diaries contained any clues to Kennedy’s assassination. This, it was thought, would be a possible reason for Mary being on the long list of strange deaths that it was claimed were linked to the president’s demise. But because Angleton had read the diaries, and Mary’s brother-in-law Ben Bradlee, the Washington Post editor, had at least learned of their main contents from Tony, this seemed unlikely. Apart from that, there appeared no motive for her death other than rape. It was common in random attacks in the U.S. capital. Yet doubts lingered over the decades.

  By early in 1965, Straight had decided to move into Jackie Kennedy’s town house in Georgetown, despite his reservations about ghosts of the recent past. An article in the Washington Evening Star on February 18 quoted Pamela Turnure, Jackie’s press secretary in New York, as saying that “the papers have not been signed as yet but that the Straights have indicated strong interest in buying it.” Another source said the house was “considered sold” by real estate agent J. F. Begg Realty Co., who had handled the sale for the former First Lady since the summer of 1964. The “principals”—Jackie and Straight—had agreed verbally. The contracts were being drawn in New York. When pressed, the agents admitted that the settlement price was expected to be less than the $265,000 asking figure. The Star reporter, Daisy Cleland, claimed that Straight’s intended purchase baffled many friends when they heard about the move from rural Virginia to the hubbub of Georgetown. Yet Straight, with his ascetic appreciation of history and architecture, did not have to be told of the value and prestige of such a move. The final settlement price was rumored to be $200,000 or less. Considering the original figure of $325,000 before Jackie moved in, Straight had secured an amazing deal, which was confirmation in itself of his claim of a strong relationship with the former First Lady. He planned to restore the house with new wiring and roof, knowing that even if he spent $100,000—a huge sum for renovations in the mid-1960s—he would still be well ahead financially.15