Last of the Cold War Spies (40 page)

Now two members of the Cambridge ring had shown they were willing to declare their allegiance to another country, something to which Straight had said he was vulnerable because of his claimed lack of roots. Philby, perhaps the most dedicated to the cause of all, would sooner or later be under pressure to follow.

R
ose and Straight did not waste any time in obeying Whitney’s dictums following his threats. They put Old Westbury up for sale in May as soon as they returned from the United Kingdom. Straight went on a search for a buyer for
The New Republic
. He wished to secure a sale to a “wealthy liberal” and had plans to carry on in some way with the magazine. Without the magazine, he was just another wealthy dilettante with creative aspirations as a writer or painter. With it, even if he were sneered at by right-wing politicians, there was still an air of respectability and importance about the owner or editor of a magazine such as
The
New Republic
. It also gave him entrée anywhere he wished. Now he had to get rid of it. He flew around the country seeing prospective buyers, including Averell Harriman in New York, without luck.
¹

Then in mid-1951, Gil Harrison and Straight went as delegates of the AVC to Rome for a conference of the World Veterans Association. Harrison’s fiancée, the wealthy heiress Nancy Blaine, accompanied them. Harrison had no real background in journalism apart from editing a student newspaper, the
Daily Bruin
, at the University of California. Yet he was keen to take over
The New Republic
.

It depended on his marrying Blaine, a dedicated liberal. She was the granddaughter of the rich Anita McCormick Blaine, a communist who
set up the New World Foundation and financed Henry Wallace’s campaign for the presidency in 1948. It was a near-perfect pedigree for Straight’s purposes.

Whitney kept the pressure on Rose and Straight through 1951 as they attempted to appease him by their efforts to sell the properties. In December, Rose rang Straight to tell him that the magazine “was in worse shape than we had supposed.” He wanted it closed down and thought at best they could keep it going until the spring of 1952. Without being able to draw on the funds of Trust 11, Straight had to take drastic action at the magazine.
²
He fired staff, including the long-serving Helen Fuller. The magazine appeared poverty-stricken now compared to its halcyon, high-spending days in 1947.

Meanwhile Straight continued to be active, using
The New Republic
and the AVC as vehicles for his views. He was having minor political influence. In early 1952, he (again) called for Truman to withdraw from the campaign for the presidency. Straight preferred Adlai Stevenson, the governor of Illinois, whom he regarded as a man of rare distinction. He greeted Straight like a long-lost relation. His grandfather was vice-president under Grover Cleveland and was close to Straight’s grandfather. Straight demonstrated he was learning the value of attacking Joseph McCarthy as opposed to his attempts to appear as if he were against communism. It was proving popular and safe, from his point of view.

Straight called McCarthy “a beast of the political underworld.” The line was picked up by the newspapers. Straight seemed to enjoy the thrust and parry with the extreme right in the United States, especially with Rose sending threatening letters if encounters became too rough or close to sensitive areas. A far-right-wing journal called
The Cross and the Flag
quoted a small section of an article by Straight in
The New Republic
that praised Dwight Eisenhower. The journal’s piece was headed “Even Red Mike Likes Ike.” Rose wrote a letter saying the use of the term “Red” had been held to be libelous per se in a New York court. Straight’s positioning in the AVC and
The New Republic
were then used to show he had a record opposing the Communist Party. The journal published a retraction as demanded by Rose, but its editor noted he was delighted to oblige. It was well established, the journal remarked, that the most dangerous reds were the anticommunist reds. Straight claimed that this upset Rose but that he found it hilarious.
³

Whitney was kept at bay by the sale of Westbury in April 1952, then Harrison married Nancy. Later in the year, Straight had secured a commitment from him that he would buy the magazine as soon as Anita Mc-Cormick Blaine died and Nancy came into her inheritance from the estate. In July, Rose visited London and Dartington to inform Whitney, Dorothy, and their lawyers of their progress in selling assets.

A package sent by registered mail arrived at the office of the William C. Whitney Foundation in October 1952. It contained a disconcerting twenty-four page questionnaire from the Select Committee of the House of Representatives created to “investigate tax-exempt foundations.” This was a euphemism for challenging the right of organizations to avoid tax while funding communist fronts. Straight found most questions “tiresome rather than threatening.” But a few worried him and Rose. Question 9 wanted to know if they had investigated the organizations they were funding to see if they were “subversive” or if they had been “cited” (that is, named by the HUAC or the Senate’s Subcommittee on Internal Security as subversive or potentially so). Question 14 asked if the Whitney Foundation had made any “grants, gift, loan, contribution or expenditure” to anyone or a group that had been cited.

Rose and Straight, secretary and president of the Whitney Foundation respectively, were summoned to appear before the Select Committee on December 5, 1952. Straight characterized it as controlled by southerners with chips on their shoulders concerning wealthy foundations whose board members lived in the North and East. Nevertheless some of committeemen were genuinely concerned with uncovering and preventing subversion.

At 9:30 a.m. they were ushered into the office of Harold M. Keele, counsel to the committee. Keele motioned for them to sit in chairs opposite his desk while he perused their responses to the questionnaire. Then he looked at them like a schoolmaster about to chastise a couple of schoolboys. Keele told them that his purpose was to bring about corrective action rather than to punish those who were guilty of past errors. If they would cooperate, there would no public humiliation at the hands of certain committee members. Rose and Straight thanked him. Keele turned to page nine. The answer from them to a certain question, he said,
saddened him. Who was the board member who had joined so many fronts that had been cited?
⁴

Straight told him it was the well-known columnist Max Lerner, who had willingly submitted a list of his past political affiliations. Straight described how Lerner had been reviled by the Communist Party and its allies. Keele cut him short. The Whitney Foundation, he said, had supported the Highlander Folk School, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, and a number of other organizations to which the Select Committee took strong objection. Keele had the impression from Straight’s written responses that Lerner had advocated making the grants to these cited groups. If Straight and Rose conceded that much, and if corrective measures were taken (that is, if Lerner were fired from the Whitney Foundation), then no public examination of their grants would be called for.

That gave the witnesses pause. Whatever the impression they had given in the responses, Straight was forced to admit that Lerner had not been responsible for the money grants by the foundation to the cited organizations that were either communist fronts or controlled by communists. For that reason, he should not be fired. Straight was quick to add that they could not concede that the cited groups were improper. Whitney grants were made to organizations certified as educational or philanthropic (and therefore tax-exempt) by the treasury board.

Keele shook his head. There was nothing more to be said.

At 10:35 a.m. the Select Committee was called to order in a hearing room, with the Honorable Aime J. Forand presiding. Next to him were Keele and two other representatives, Messrs. Simpson and O’Toole.

Straight was pleased that the chairman of the committee, Eugene Cox of Georgia, was not present. He had promised the press he would give the witness a good working-over. That was before Thanksgiving, Straight noted callously, when Cox had eaten too much turkey. He had died of a stroke.
⁵

There were several journalists and photographers present as Straight and Rose took their seats at a table facing the committee. A teletypist sat beside the witnesses, tapping out shorthand.

Keele asked Straight the amount of his foundation’s assets: it was about $1.5 million. He was then asked his average annual income over the past five years. Straight thought it was $60,000, but Rose corrected him and said it was $75,000. Keele wanted to know about the directors at the
foundation. Straight explained that his mother put her philanthropy work on a more institutional basis in 1927 when she set up an advisory committee concerning gifts. It consisted of Ruth Morgan, “well known in various international peace organizations”; the writer Herbert Croly; and Dr. Eduard Lindeman of the New York School of Social Work. The committee became a foundation in 1936 when Dorothy set up all the family trusts. The five directors were Rose; Thomas J. Regan, a New York banker; Max Lerner; Straight; and his sister Beatrice.

The foundation had $60,000 a year—from investments of the capital—to give away, mainly to tax-exempt organizations. The average grant was about $1,500. Straight pointed out that they liked to give money to “labor organizations, particularly in the field of labor education.” This included propaganda material about Russia. Typical was the Labor Education Service. Others were the National Planning Association and the AVC, which had received “substantial” contributions.

The questions and answers wallowed in inconsequential areas for some time before Keele brought up the fact that the foundation had given twenty grants to six groups that had been cited. He mentioned a few of them—the Southern Conference, the League of Mutual Aid, and Frontier Films. He then asked about grants to cited groups that Straight and Rose had left off the list. Straight replied: “I think you are referring, sir, to the American Council of the Institute of Pacific Relations, and that is a fact. That was an inadvertence on our part due to, I think, a careless reading of your questionnaire.”
⁶

The reporters present began to sit up and scribble. Rose and Straight were beginning to look uncomfortable. A photographer positioned himself near their table.

Keele: Why was it that as late as 1948 you were still making grants to the American Council?

Straight gave a long answer extolling the virtues of the IPR and saying it was “very much more than the American Council.” He then concluded
that whether or not the foundation would give it further grants was “an open matter.”

Keele: You also failed to list in your answers—did you not?—a grant to the IPR in 1943?

Straight: That is correct. That 1943 grant, I think, was related to the Mount Tremulant Conference [of the IPR], which I described.

Keele: You did not include—did you?—the American-Russian Institute Grants. In 1937 you gave $500; in 1938, $1000; in 1939, $500; in 1944, $500; in 1945, $500; in 1947, $500.

Straight: Yes, sir.
⁷

Straight and Rose now looked concerned. A photographer knelt on one knee in front of them, set off flash bulbs in their faces, and captured their nervousness. Keele and the other members of the committee added further pressure. Straight was forced to defend some of the propaganda for the Soviet Union.

Straight: I think that we sincerely felt [in the war years] that this was an effort to spread further information concerning an ally of the United States.

Keele: What about the grants to Commonwealth College in 1937 and 1938? You have not listed them either, have you?

Straight: That was three years before I came onto this foundation. I frankly don’t know about it.