Last of the Cold War Spies (15 page)

The Moscow Center was not about to let this example of capitalist largesse slip by. It passed the money to a grateful Harry Pollitt in London and then directed Green to bring up the topic of the pocket money at their next meeting. The cryptic instruction was: “Receive this money [Straight’s spare $10,000 to $20,000] and send it to us.”

Presumably the extra dollars were absorbed into KGB consolidated revenue or shared out to other U.S. agents needing hard cash. One way or the other Straight continued his generous support for all things communist either with his formerly open outlets or in the espionage world.

Straight approached contacts at the State Department again and informed them his services were for free. He would take anything going, assist anyone. He was then taken on a temporary assignment in the department’s Office of the Economic Adviser.

Straight was in. He could now become familiar with the old ornate, gray-stoned State Department with its high ceilings, circular staircases, and long corridors. The KGB expected he could also commence his work as a Soviet intelligence agent.

Straight moved to Washington to live and found a room in the redbrick house on 1718 H Street, which his father Willard and friends had shared as young bachelors. The sitting room was lined with Chinese wallpaper brought back from Beijing by Willard and photos of him and his friends. Also in residence were George Summerlin, the State Department’s chief of protocol; journalist Joe Alsop; and a banker, Major Heath.

In December 1937, Straight met Green at the New York Zoo and informed him of his success at State. Green drew him out on his views about Germany’s rearmament. From this discussion came Straight’s first cover assignment—a report on Hitler’s capacity to wage war, entitled Economic Impact of European Rearmament.

The project was to be Straight’s excuse for accessing documents and views from Washington insiders that would be useful in the Kremlin. “Green was not there to act like a Cambridge don,” Yuri Modin remarked with a hearty laugh when we discussed Straight’s first project during our Moscow interviews in October 1996. “There was no point in him [Straight] handing in a nice analytical thesis for a mark out of ten. We wanted documentation about U.S. intelligence on a wide range of topics, in this case to do with the Nazis and their capacity for war.”
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Straight threw himself into three months of work. He accessed all the documents he could, drew on published sources, and used the assignment to make Washington contacts. It got him around town and noticed.

In January 1938, Green let Moscow know of the success of Straight’s getting into State: “Now he has been assigned to write a paper on international armaments.”
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Straight relied on another KGB agent (possibly Alger Hiss, code named Eleven) within another department at State.

Green’s report added: “he receives reports on this issue [armaments] by Ambassador. . . . [When] the paper is finished [Straight]) promises to give us a copy. Reading the Ambassadors’ reports, he will remember the important items and pass them to me at our meetings. I send his first notes from the reports he read.”
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Green also expressed his concern that Straight was making friendly contact with other Soviet agents in place at State, including Laurence Duggan and Alger Hiss.
The New Republic
’s Roger Baldwin had already introduced Straight to Duggan; Green reported that he ordered Straight to ignore Duggan. Each of the so-called progressives—including Hiss, Duggan, and Straight—recognized the views and positions of the others, but none realized that the others were agents. Consequently, there were discussions by all of them, including Straight, with their controls about the ideologically correct people with whom they came into contact.

Straight passed on his interest in Hiss to Green, who didn’t react to the information that Hiss was ideologically progressive. Green was nervous that Hiss, who was run by the “Neighbors”—the GRU (Soviet military intelligence)—might try to recruit the younger man, especially as he was intelligent and articulate both orally and on paper. (Hiss was instructed by his GRU bosses not to build his relationship with Straight.)

In a December 1997 letter response to a review in the
New York Review
of Books,
Straight tried to make it seem that he did not attempt to recruit Hiss. “[In a June 1938 dispatch to the KGB Moscow Center] Akhermov (Green) notes simply that I ‘mentioned’ Hiss as ‘a very progressive man,’” Straight wrote. He went on to explain that saying (as a book reviewer did) he tried to recruit Hiss was a “distortion” and “laughable. Hiss was an important official in the State Department in June 1938. I was an unpaid volunteer aged 21.”
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Straight’s self-depiction was misleading. Like all key agents, he was on the lookout for possible new recruits to the KGB. His approach to his control about Hiss meant that Straight wanted Hiss considered for recruitment.

Straight continued to remain “uneducated.” He couldn’t contain his natural inclination to talk and talk about politics. Green expressed his concerns again. The Moscow Center acted by ordering Earl Browder, the
U.S. Communist Party’s leader, to stop any party members making contact with Straight. Green in turn began to lecture Straight about not making any contact with communists. Straight had to make out he was a liberal who fitted nicely to the left of the Democratic Party. He would have been relieved that he was not asked to consort with fascists as his recruiter, Guy Burgess, did in England.

Straight kept up his image of broadening his links by socializing with prominent politicians. There was dinner with Dean Acheson, an international lawyer, later to be President Harry Truman’s Cold War secretary of state. There was lunch with Bob La Follette (a liberal Republican senator from Wisconsin). He also met up with Maury Maverick, a liberal Texas congressman, whom Straight found uncouth. Yet he assessed him as the ablest of the progressives, who ranged from left-wing liberals to hard-line communists, both Stalinists and, like La Follette, Trotsky supporters.
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Maverick read aloud to him a speech that he was about to deliver in Congress. Straight was not impressed. He asked Maverick if he could rewrite it; Maverick agreed.
The New York Times
reported it, and Straight’s credibility went up a fraction within the U.S. liberal community.

Straight could not wait for the Crompton family’s return to live in Rye, New York. Straight planned a meeting with Bin at Westbury. His priorities, however, centered around his secret work for Russian intelligence. Green kept in touch and began meeting Straight in Washington, where they both took precautions. The FBI, they both knew, was in the habit of tailing some Soviet embassy employees.

Security was not tight at State, which seemed to Straight like a gentleman’s club. He had no trouble taking out documents. He and Green would meet at a restaurant, where papers would be handed over. Despite being wary, risks were taken. Straight recalled on one occasion dropping Green off near the Soviet embassy “so he could have copies made [microfilmed] of official State Department documents not for public consumption, and [which] may have borne the classification ‘Confidential.’” Straight picked Green up later. The documents were handed back and replaced in State files.
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Security, such as it was, never questioned the serious-looking, young “volunteer” in the smart suit, who often carried a bulging briefcase.

The first seeds of doubt about Straight’s capacities as a secret agent began to form at the Moscow Center. It reiterated to Green that Straight had to be “educated” and “his brains rebuilt in our manner.”
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Clearly there was a problem in the center’s understanding of their most important new recruit in the United States. He was a free thinker, not someone who could easily be brainwashed. He wanted to please his masters but couldn’t compete with his own conscience—his own comprehension of events. The center thought it could dumb down the raw agent until he was more like an automaton.

He was viewed at this point as a sloppy undergraduate passing on stale data. The center instructed Green to get hold of only documents it was interested in. Short of that, he had to date his notes and specify the documents and their authors to gauge their import.

Green imparted the directive, and Straight labored on. He handed in his report on Hitler’s rearmament to his superior at State, Herbert Feis, on the last Saturday in May, and another version to Green the same day. Then he rushed off to Westbury to see Bin. The romance was blossoming.