Last of the Cold War Spies (51 page)

Straight returned to Dartington with Rose in 1967 after another meeting with MI5 in London. British intelligence, under the guidance of the dogged Peter Wright, was causing havoc among former Cambridge graduates and other communist circles. He and his colleagues were frustrated by the lack of success as they followed all the false trails laid down by the Cambridge ring over the four years since Philby’s defection. The KGB continued to run circles around their British counterparts as mission after mission against the Russians went wrong thanks mainly to Victor Roths-child’s schemes. Alister Watson, the head of the Submarine Detection Research Section of the British Admiralty, had been named by several of the ring and was one of many who were hounded. Some committed suicide. Sir Andrew Cohen, a diplomat and former Apostle, had a heart attack and died just prior to being questioned.
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During the hysteria, there was much shredding of documents and burning of files by communists fearful that Wright and his “Gestapo” (as he characterized his team) might stumble on incriminating information. According to two sources connected to Dartington Hall, a former student (not Straight) returned in 1967 and went through the files, removing any data that could be used against fellow students in the prevailing climate.
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The year 1968 exploded into a period of revolution that on the surface would seem to excite all communists. After all, the ideology of Marx, Lenin, and Mao preached it. Demonstrations and barricades were evident in many countries as would-be revolutionaries caused unrest and tried to overthrow ruling authorities and regimes. It was enough to keep high the heart rate of any hard-left-winger such as Straight, who had waited three decades for upheaval. Even at a mature rebel age of 51, he would be willing to embrace whatever radical events occurred or any change that resulted.

But there were complications. While it was pleasing for procommunists to see students and other left-wingers attacking the barricades in Paris, Washington, and Chicago, there were disturbing activities bubbling in Poland and Czechoslovakia. The virus of revolution did not seem to
recognize the political hue of the ruling elite. In Prague students and intellectuals were equally keen to rid themselves of a stagnant, repressive regime as their counterparts in Paris.

The fever began in the Vietnam War between South Vietnam, supported by the United States, and communist North Vietnam. On January 30, 1968, national liberation front (Vietcong) guerrillas, supported by North Vietnam conventional forces, launched a massive attack on the South to mark Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. In Saigon, the Vietcong penetrated the U.S. embassy. The U.S. media carried pictures of U.S. soldiers lying dead in the compound.

The Tet offensive marked the turning point in the war, in which the communists would gradually gain the ascendancy. For Western communist true believers, this was seen as a major advance in the Cold War arm-wrestle between the communist superpowers and the United States and its allies. The antiwar movement in the United States intensified. At the same time as the Tet offensive, police in Warsaw arrested fifty students protesting the forced closure of a nineteenth-century play that included anti-Russian references such as “all that Moscow sends us are spies, jackasses and fools.” It led to all Polish universities going on strike in March. There were major student protests in Rome and Madrid soon after that led to universities in those countries being shut down. The world of the privileged classes, at least among the budding intelligentsia and future national leaders, was in turmoil.

Upheaval of a different kind occurred a few weeks later on April 4 when the leader of the black civil rights movement in the United States, Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Soon afterward, young blacks went on the rampage in Washington. Straight was on Martha’s Vineyard. Expecting to perhaps witness some sort of attempted revolutionary action, he flew to Washington but was most disappointed to find there had only been rioting and looting. The blacks had gone after radios, TVs, and clothes. Straight saw this as an attempt, in effect, to join in with the mainstream of the U.S. competitive society.
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Less than a month later, unrest in Czechoslovakia’s capital Prague reached new heights for a communist country in Eastern Europe when on May 1 a long procession marched through the city’s Wenceslas Square. Banners proclaimed: “Of our own free will, for the first time.” People from organizations silenced for twenty years since the communist takeover in 1948 were speaking out.

Two days later a sudden crisis in Paris took everyone by surprise. Endemic student disorders, which had been prevalent for some time, accelerated when a rally of student radicals at the main Paris university, the Sorbonne, was broken up by the police. Barricades went up in the Latin Quarter that housed the Sorbonne, street fighting broke out, and the Sorbonne was occupied by student rebels and converted into a huge commune. Unrest spread to other French universities. Workers took up the banners of spontaneous protest, and factories were shut down by strikes that rolled across France. Soon millions of workers were involved, and the nation was paralyzed.

Straight kept one keen eye on events in Europe while following, again from a frustrating distance, the 1968 presidential candidate nominations by the parties. Lyndon Johnson, much to Straight’s relief, was not going to run again for the White House after occupying it for nearly five years since Kennedy’s assassination. This left the way open for several Democratic potential nominees, including Jack Kennedy’s younger brother Robert, Hubert Humphrey, and Eugene McCarthy.

On the other side, Ronald Reagan, a former actor and California’s governor, was an outside chance. But Straight was fascinated that the man from his law firm, Richard M. Nixon, the nemesis of both the left and the Eastern Establishment, was running again and the favorite for the Republican bid for the highest office. This was just as Straight had predicted before and after that first meeting in New York in 1962. “Tricky Dick,” as his opponents and even his friends called him, had a few cards up his sleeve after just losing the presidency to Kennedy in 1960. He was using a slick advertising campaign to position himself as the “new Nixon.” The big difference from the “old Nixon” was his image. He was the same character, but now instead of a five o’clock shadow to give him a shady appearance on TV, there was clean-shaven Richard. Clever “advertorials” were selling the new product, just like soap powder, except Straight and anyone who ever talked to him knew that this politician was no flake. He was particularly well read and knowledgeable on politics and history. He was also more than ambitious to get the job. One more developed characteristic in Nixon was his ruthlessness.

Straight was never going to support Nixon, despite the fascination with his candidature. If anyone was going to get his vote, it would be Eugene McCarthy, he told the Elmhirsts. McCarthy wanted Straight as his campaign finance chairman. Clearly he had not consulted Henry Wallace (who died in 1965) or Whitney Straight. Yet Straight declined his flattering offer. He didn’t think McCarthy was a winner. Watching him in political action would have brought back memories of the Wallace campaign twenty years earlier. McCarthy had a habit of throwing away speeches his aides had researched and scripted in favor of some off the cuff remarks. American writer David Halberstam commented that “one sensed that if elected President he might abolish the U.S. Government . . . ”

McCarthy mocked Robert Kennedy for his interest in the ethnic vote and his plan to set up twenty-six committees to deal with the main ethnic groupings in the country, saying: “26 varieties of Americans—like 26 varieties of ice cream. Like a jigsaw puzzle.” Amusing, perhaps, but vote catching, no. Straight sensed the odds were against this whimsical candidate. Besides, Straight was once bitten, twice shy. Why again waste time on a campaign that was sure to fail? And one too that would eschew real radical policies. Anyway, Straight was sure the candidate, if he reached as far as the party convention, would become institutionalized by the straight-jacket the Democrats would place on him. He was less enamored with Robert Kennedy, but admitted he was a stronger and more durable candidate.

These two fought out the all-important California primary on June 5. Kennedy won. He spoke graciously at the Hotel Ambassador about the vanquished McCarthy and asked his supporters to join him. Moments later Kennedy was shot dead by a lone assassin, Sirhan Sirhan. Robert joined his brother as a victim of violence and conspiracy in America.

It left the way open for McCarthy to battle Hubert Humphrey at the Chicago Convention two months later, where Straight now found Mc-Carthy petulant and self-pitying. He was also lukewarm about Humphrey, who won the party nomination. He told the family back in England that if Nixon, the Republican candidate, were to win the 1968
election, it wouldn’t be so bad, in the long run. “That really still surprised us,” William Elmhirst said.
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