Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (54 page)

"The purpose of this activity is to ascertain his current political views and attitudes, which will allow us to determine the usefulness of re-establishing contact with him as an agent and the likelihood of getting leads from him on people working in the State Dep., using him to legalize our workers, and obtaining
information about American intelligence's use of the student exchange program in its work against us. When establishing official contact with "Prince"
[Duggan], one should bear in mind his hesitation and persistent attempts to
break off all relations with us in the past. Therefore, it is essential to take great
care not to reveal our worker's identity to him or to antagonize him with our
over-eager interest in him."82

As directed, Striganov arranged an appointment with Duggan at his
New York office in July and reported: "`He received me cordially, was attentive, gave me a detailed account of the institute's work, showed me his office, and having done this, led me to the door. I detained him with a question, and we talked for another 10-15 minutes, but then I had to leave
because Duggan, having led me to the elevator, let me know unequivocally that it was time for me to go. He had not wished to talk about anything other
than the institute and had tried the whole time to take an official tone. I got
the impression ... that he was constantly on his guard, anticipating that I
would ask some unexpected question."' Striganov got Duggan's agreement
to meet again to discuss Soviet cooperation with the HE, but attempts to
schedule the follow-up were turned aside, and Duggan did not attend an official Soviet diplomatic reception to which he was invited. Finally, on 15 December 1948, the Soviet diplomat phoned again, and when a secretary said
Duggan was not available, Striganov asked her to take down his name and
let Duggan know he had called. Five days later Laurence Duggan jumped
from his sixteenth-floor office window and died.83

What the KGB didn't know at the time but soon learned was that it
was not the only security agency calling on Duggan in the fall of 1948. As
the Hiss-Chambers investigation heated up in 1948, the FBI interviewed
Hede Massing. She and her husband had quietly dropped their connections to the KGB sometime toward the end of World War II. Deeply disillusioned with the Communist movement and increasingly anti-Soviet,
she provided an account of her work as a KGB agent to the FBI when it
interviewed her on 7-8 December 1948, including her role in recruiting
Duggan as a Soviet source.84

FBI agents interviewed Duggan on io December, five days before
Striganov's call and ten days prior to his suicide. Duggan admitted having known Hede Massing but denied that she had ever attempted to recruit him for espionage. However, he told the FBI that two other persons, Henry Collins and Frederick Vanderbilt Field, had approached him
and argued that American diplomatic information should be shared with
the Soviet Union. Duggan said he had brushed them off but had no explanation for why he had not reported the incidents to the State Department. Duggan then cut short the interview.85

The KGB reports demonstrate that from his earliest days as a contact Duggan had been nervous and frightened about exposure. He had
only barely survived the fallout of Chambers's 1939 revelations to Adolf
Berle. But Undersecretary of State Welles and the State Department establishment had carefully hushed up that incident without involving such
outsiders as the FBI and the Justice Department. This time it was very
different. Duggan was on his own without the patronage of a senior official. The Cold War had begun. And public discussion of Soviet espionage,
sparked by Bentley and Chambers, had become heated. The FBI was
ringing at his front door while the KGB was knocking at his back door. His
way out was suicide.

Clueless that their friend had been a Soviet agent, Duggan's prominent defenders and much of the media blamed the FBI, the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and anti-Communist paranoia for his
death. But Aleksandr Panyushkin, the Soviet ambassador and KGB station chief, in a cable to Moscow on Christmas Day ruefully admitted that
Striganov's contacts with Duggan might have "to some degree influenced
his decision to kill himself."s'

Despite all his vacillations Laurence Duggan was a more valuable source
for the KGB inside the State Department than another recruit in whom
it had placed high hopes. Michael Straight was both a more fervent Communist and even better connected within the rarefied air of the American establishment than Duggan, but his shifting political commitments
came to limit what he was willing to do for the KGB.

The son of the millionaire owners of the New Republic, Michael
Straight was educated in England and joined the Communist Party of
Great Britain while a student at Cambridge University in 1935. Guy
Burgess, a few years older, was already a Soviet agent by the time Straight
arrived at Cambridge. Although Burgess left Cambridge in 1935, he kept
in touch through visits and his ties to Anthony Blunt, a Cambridge don,
secret Communist, and KGB talent spotter and recruiter. A January 1937
Burgess report praised Straight:

"Michael, whom I have known for several years now, worked with us for two
years. He is one of the leaders (as a person, he is not an organizer) of the
[Communist] Party in Cambridge. He is the Party's orator, as well as a firstrate economist. He is an extremely devoted member of the Party and completely dependable, although he has not quite let go of certain romantic notions. Considering his family connections, impending fortune, and abilities, it
stands to reason that he has a bright future ahead of him.... He strikes one as
being very young and full of enthusiasm, and he can be considered capable of
secret work; he is devoted enough for it."

Burgess in February reported that Blunt had successfully carried out
Straight's recruitment. Theodore Mally, the KGB illegal supervising
Burgess, thought Straight showed promise and "he could be used either
here or in America. "87

Straight's prominence among Cambridge's Communists was a liability for intelligence work, so Burgess took advantage of the death of his close friend, John Cornford, fighting with the International Brigades in
Spain, to have Straight pretend to break his left-wing ties. Burgess reported to Moscow Center that through Blunt he had informed Straight

"that it was necessary to use America and his family as a means to disappear.
He could show how John C's death has crushed him, could spend the rest of
the semester sitting alone in his room ... behave like someone who has been
physically crushed. With regard to politics, to go no further than to say: `did
any good come of John's death?' Then, when the university term is over, to go
to the USA and show that Roosevelt's experiment made a great impression on
him. Leave the Party under the pretext that it `proved to be inevitable because
of his family and his family's connections.' He could write letters to A. B. [Anthony Blunt] about his impression of Roosevelt's activities and his growing enthusiasm about him, and A. B. could show these letters to his friends at Cambridge.

A. B. proposed this plan, which to all appearances has the greatest likelihood of success and would bring the least harm to Nigel [Straight]. N. agreed
and proposed that he leave with the Int'l Student Society expedition, which is
going to the USA on 17 March to learn about the Tennessee Valley Experiment [TVA]."88

After his visit to the United States in March 1937, Straight prepared
a report for the KGB on his prospects. He noted that he "`spoke with
Roosevelt and his wife"' and discussed several options he had and their
usefulness for Soviet needs, ranging from the TVA and the Farm Credit
Association to the Federal Reserve Board or as a secretary to FDR himself. President Roosevelt had recommended the National Resources
Board as the best choice. Straight casually mentioned the top New Dealers whom he and his parents knew-Secretary of the Treasury Henry
Morgenthau, Works Progress administrator Harry Hopkins, Secretary of
Agriculture Henry Wallace-"`this means I could easily find any position."' His reputation as a radical still clung to him, and he flippantly told
the KGB that in order to free himself of it "`I use brilliantine and keep
my nails clean ... in some cases, passionate speeches against the Reds."'
He also told the KGB that his personal income from his family fortune
was $75,000 a year, the equivalent of more than $1 million in 2008 dol-
lars.S9

Arnold Deutsch, a KGB officer, met with Straight several times before his final departure for America in August 1937. He assessed him as
-a typical American. Someone who thinks big. He thinks he can do
everything himself."' Straight struck Deutsch "`as being a dilettante, a young fellow who has everything he wants, more money than he can
spend, which is why, in part, he has an uneasy conscience and strives to
do something."' In another report written the day before Straight's departure, Deutsch emphasized that Straight was "`very inexperienced and
sometimes behaves like a child in the sense that he has romantic ideals.
He thinks he works for the Comintern, and it is necessary to keep him in
this illusion for the time being."' Deutsch forwarded to Moscow Center
both a handwritten note that would function as a material password for
establishing contact with Straight in New York and the rendezvous protocol: "'During that week (the best thing would be to write him the letter on Friday or Saturday), he will be at this apartment every day until to
o'clock in the morning (it is his mother's apartment). When our friend
calls on him, he should say the following: `I am here from Anthony. He
says hello.' Nigel [Straight] will reply: `Is he still at Cambridge?' At this
time, our friend will pass him the handwritten note enclosed here."'00

In September Moscow instructed Iskhak Akhmerov to contact
Straight, explaining that "`proper development of work with him and capable guidance will lead us to sources of exceptional importance and
value."' A subsequent Moscow Center communication warned that it had
learned that Straight was "`actively being cultivated by the Trotskyites"'
and instructed Akhmerov to "`use all your skill to keep him from leaving
us."' The relationship, however, got off to a somewhat rocky start. Moscow Center had forgotten to send the proper contact information, and
Straight was constantly asking about it. More seriously, he had concluded
that his future lay in industry and decided that he should take a job with
General Motors in Detroit rather than join the State Department and
risk being sent to some "backwater." Moscow scotched that idea, telling
Akhmerov that his agreement to the plan was "ludicrous," and by the end
of 1937 Straight was working at the State Department.91

Akhmerov also reported to Moscow Center about his relationship
with Straight and attempts to guide his political orientation:

"He and I have cemented our friendship. He is eager to listen and take my advice. I am exerting as much ideological influence as I can on him. We discuss
polit. topics at length. I pick out the appropriate literature and give it to him.
His milieu in the circles of the `New Republic' does not have a particularly
healthy effect on him. Such liberals as Roger Baldwin, a friend of the USSR
on the surface but who in his heart is its enemy and who sympathizes a great
deal with Trotsky and people like him, whom N. ["Nigel"/Straight] sees, can
only have a negative influence on him. N. is not as firm and established a Party member as you write about him. Apparently, Baldwin is trying to get his hands
on him. He sends N. invitation cards for liberal meetings, invites him to lunch,
etc. N. told me that Baldwin is OK. I explained to him, and continue to explain
at every meeting, that Baldwin and certain people like him look OK on the
surface but are in fact our enemies. I asked N. not to make any donations
without first consulting me. During one conversation, N. said that he has io-
12,00o Am. dollars he doesn't need, and he doesn't know what to do with it;
he asked if I needed money, he could give it to me. This is his spare pocket
money. I said that I didn't need money personally and that he should keep it
or put it in the bank. As for his former regular dues, I will take them and pass
them on to the appropriate person. At another meeting, he gave me $2,ooo as
his quarterly Party dues and said that in the future he would give more. I am
sending this money"

With an eye to the account books, Moscow Center ordered Akhmerov: "`Go
back with N ["Nigel"/Straight] to the subject of his pocket money (12,000).
Get this money from him and send it to us."' An entry in Vassiliev's notebooks records that Moscow Center forwarded the $2,000 Akhmerov sent to
the Comintern for crediting to the British Communist Party. 92

In his 1983 autobiography Michael Straight admitted periodic meetings beginning in 1938 with a Soviet agent he knew as Michael Green,
who was clearly Akhmerov, at which he handed over what he claimed
were unimportant government memoranda and reports he had written.
Straight insisted that these contacts were inconsequential and his contacts with Soviet intelligence were youthful indiscretions that had no
practical import. Some portions of that story are confirmed by KGB documents, but others suggest he was a more active and productive source
than he admitted.93

Almost immediately after he started work at the State Department,
the KGB faced the problem of keeping Straight isolated from other Soviet agents. Friends urged him to meet Laurence Duggan as someone
with similar ideological views, but Akhmerov steered him away with the
warning that it could damage his career. Another danger arose in June
1938 after Straight met Alger Hiss and quickly identified him as sharing
his own ideological sympathies. Not wanting a repeat of the Hiss-Noel
Field mess, Akhmerov urged Moscow Center to see that GRU ordered
Hiss not to approach Straight .94

Akhmerov reported in January 1938 that Straight worked on international economic problems and was happy with his position and expected
to be able to advance. He had just been assigned to write a report on in ternational armaments and "`promised to give us a copy."' He was memorizing portions of various ambassadors' reports on armament questions
and giving them to Akhmerov. Moscow was not overly impressed with
what he was supplying, asking Akhmerov to "`teach him how to pick out
material that will be of interest to us"' and provide more detail about the
documents about which he was reporting, since "`in the absence of this
information, his agent reports are losing their value."' Moreover, the data
were outdated: "`Does he have nothing but last year's material on his
desk?"' Moscow pushed Akhmerov to make Straight "`more active at
once,"' "`to increase the amount of information"' he obtained, and to
'-send any information by telegraph as soon as possible."' In response,
Akhmerov encouraged Straight to transfer into the European Division,
where he would have access to material more directly of interest to the
USSR and to provide the names of potential recruits; the first two names
that Straight suggested were Laurence Duggan and Alger Hiss. He, of
course, was unaware that they were already recruited (by the KGB and
GRU respectively).95