Last of the Cold War Spies

by Roland Perry

  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.”16

  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.”17

  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.”18

  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.19

  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.20 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.”21 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.

  Moscow and Green continued to be let down. Green complained to the center that he talked long and hard with Straight every week but that he was making no headway. Straight seemed to Green and the center to be concerned about stealing classified documents. Straight maintained that he no longer received ambassadorial reports, and he continued to draw on published material for his claimed three or four economic reports passed to Green.22

  Straight’s claim covers up his capacity to access sensitive documents and take notes from them. There had to be more than three or four documents, given the number of meetings he had had with Green and other controls. But the key is not the actual documents but rather the information and analysis he passed on to his controls from them. Much like Burgess, he developed analytic and writing skills that allowed him to interpret secret data for Kremlin consumption. It was a Straight specialty.

  In June 1938 Joe Alsop arranged a lunch meeting between Straight and Roosevelt’s speechwriter, Tom Corcoran, who made a persuasive case for Straight’s contributing to congressman Maury Maverick’s fight for reelection in San Antonio, Texas. He had won office in 1934 and was a true-blue New Deal liberal. Bankers and businessmen wanted Maverick out. He was one of many New Dealers they were going to destroy. Could Straight help?

  Yes, he could, to the tune of $10,000—equivalent today to about $300,000—which was a sizable donation for a political campaign. In return Straight was to observe the campaign and be offered a job working for Corcoran, assisting him in political speeches for Roosevelt. Straight agreed. Once again, he had used his money to purchase a position for the cause. He had completed his main assignment at State, and because he had not pleased Green with his harvest from it, Moscow Center decided that there might be better pickings by being on the president’s staff. He would have an office in the Department of Interior and easy access to the White House, which placed him at the hub of events politically. This appealed to Green and created a hope that he might still deliver useful documents.

  Straight flew to Sa
n Antonio in mid-June, followed Maverick’s campaign, and took shots with his trusty Leica of the old Mexican town within the city that the congressman had restored. People began to show Straight undue deference; he didn’t know why. A reporter, whom Maverick was bribing to write favorable articles, later took Straight aside and asked him what it was like to work for the FBI. Maverick had spread the word that Straight was employed by J. Edgar Hoover and had been sent to make sure that the election was not stolen by Maverick’s opponent, a local radio announcer backed by the top end of town.

  Straight took the joke; he had no choice, but he was mortified. He certainly could do without the FBI paying him any attention, which it would do on the off chance it was mislead into believing he was an imposter. Maverick lost the election, but Straight’s $10,000 investment was not a losing proposition. He had bought a few friends and a place near the top of the political table.

  Straight became known in the bureaucracy as a liberal with communist sympathies. Despite directives from Moscow, he was sought out for assistance by communist agents from local rings, who were not aware that he was a deep-cover KGB spy. One was Zalmond David Franklin, a former member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade that fought in Spain. Franklin gave him a list of written questions about Roosevelt’s cabinet appointments and some political matters. Straight declined to cooperate without explaining why to the unsuspecting comrade:23 he was servant to a deeper cause with a direct line to Moscow Center and the Kremlin.

  Another seeker of help was the Czech-born agent Solomon Aaron Lichinsky—alias Solomon Adler—who according to Straight, looked like a ski instructor or storm trooper with “stiff blond hair.”24 Adler was a member of the local communist ring inside the Treasury Department, run by Silvermaster. He had no idea of Straight’s secret work.

  Adler saw him as a likely recruit. He told Straight to lay low and that he would be recontacted.25

  Straight took a summer break from the State Department through August to spend time with Dorothy, who was staying in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and Bin. He returned to his desk in September. His report on Hitler’s rearmament was well received inside the department. Comments were attached to it from the secretary, Cordell Hull, who thought it “splendid,” and Dean Acheson, who praised it. Alger Hiss worked on the floor below. Apparently defying Moscow directives, he called Straight down for a chat about the points he had raised. Unmindful of Green’s worry about the closeness of Hiss, Straight found it pleasing that he was being encouraged by his Soviet masters and also patted on the back by those in his workplace. His boss, Feis, however, was not as impressed as Hiss. He offered no new assignments to reward his charge’s initiative. A paid position did come up in the office, and Feis offered it to Straight with little enthusiasm.26 It was turned down.

  Straight gave Green documents in mid-September and waited for a firm offer from Corcoran for a role as an unpaid assistant speechwriter. It came a week later. At the passing of further intelligence at an October meeting, Straight told his control of his successful move to the Department of Interior and the White House, claiming in his autobiography that he deceived Green by saying he would be working for Harold Ickes, then interior secretary. The implication was that Ickes would be secretary of war and that Straight would then move with him.

  Despite the lack of good espionage material coming from him, the center saw Straight as a long-term agent who had to be drawn in gradually and, it seemed from the correspondence between Green and the center, painstakingly. There was no thought of shutting him down, a point that became apparent in late 1938 when Blunt wrote to him asking for funds for refugees from the Spanish Civil War. Green was upset. He asked Moscow to order Blunt to cease this sort of contact. It once more brought Straight into the spotlight on both sides of the Atlantic as an open communist supporter.

  8

  THE INFORMANTS

  Walter Krivitsky and his family were grateful for the police guard given by France’s socialist minister for the interior, M. Dormoy, when they stayed next door to a police station at Paris’s Hotel des Academies in the Rue St. Peres. Yet two attempts by Stalin’s assassins to trap Krivitsky within thirteen months convinced him that he should defect to the United States. One attempt was at the Marseilles railway station at midnight when the family was returning to Paris. They spotted the hit squad waiting for them and managed to flee the scene. Later in Paris the family was lunching at a cafe off the Place de la Bastille when their police guard became suspicious of three men in a vehicle. The family was bundled out a rear exit.1 Both times Krivitsky had noticed the broad, plump figure of Hans Bruesse, his former chauffeur while stationed in The Hague. The small-eyed, childish-looking Bruesse was a fearsome, cold-blooded operator whose talents ran from expert lock-picking to efficient killing. Bruesse was frequently at the Krivitsky’s homes in The Hague and in Paris. Both men knew each other’s foibles and habits. For this reason, Bruesse was able to track Krivitsky, and Krivitsky was able to elude him.

  Constant police protection and the daily threat put enormous strains on the family, as did the fact that the KGB had increased its violent attacks in general against Soviet émigrés in France. The United States was inviting, but it did not prove so on the family’s arrival in New York aboard the SS Normandie on November 10, 1938. Labor officials, who at that time controlled the immigration service, debated whether to deport them. The U.S. ambassador to France, William C. Bullitt, who was briefly back in Washington for talks with Roosevelt on the European crisis, intervened and secured a 120-day visitor’s pass for Krivitsky. (Bullitt had been instrumental in attaining proper travel documents for him in France when he decided to leave.)2

  New York was Krivitsky’s base, and the family took several weeks orientating themselves to both the language and the concrete jungle. It was a culture shock, yet the city’s strong Jewish influence was attractive. Krivitsky decided to write for a living. He would tell his story about working as a Soviet agent in Europe and the world dangers posed by Stalin and his henchmen. He saw book publishers and magazines but received only lukewarm responses. Very few in the media realized the true situation in Russia, nor the mayhem caused by Stalin’s purges and hit squads. There was more concern in Jewish New York about the rise of fascism, with its direct attack on Judaism. Communist Russia had its pogroms, and anti Jewish elements fostered by Stalin at his most paranoid were always dangerous, but the Nazis were public about their thuggish hate for Jews.

  Krivitsky began writing a series of articles for the Saturday Evening Post with Chicago Daily News journalist Isaac Don Levine as his ghost writer. The only important individual in the U.S. government with any clout to sit up and take notice was a career State Department man, Loy Henderson. He had just returned (in October 1938) from a tour of duty in Moscow and was annoyed to find the indifference in Washington toward what was happening in Russia. Henderson had been monitoring communism since before the revolution and had sat in on the recent show trials. This long experience had made him a hard-liner when it came to Stalin. Henderson read Krivitsky’s initial articles, then he contacted Don Levine, who tried to arrange a meeting with Krivitsky and Henderson. Krivitsky was reluctant. His own knowledge of Soviet espionage and information from fellow émigrés made him sure that Washington was riddled with Soviet agents. Anything he said would be reported back to Moscow.

  Don Levine and Krivitsky’s lawyer, Louis Waldman, reminded him that his visa expired in March. His cooperation with Henderson might help his citizenship application. Krivitsky then agreed to a meeting in room 385 on the State Department’s eastern corridor on January 10, 1939.

  Henderson and Edward Page, another hard-liner at State, listened in amazement to Krivitsky’s revelations. They outlined the purges and even Hitler’s desire to form a pact with Stalin.

  Henderson was pleased. He suggested that further cooperation with the State Department’s passport division—run by Shipley—would help secure Krivitsky’s U.S. citizenship. Later, on January 10, Krivitsky met with Shipley, a
nd he gave her a wealth of information on Soviet illegals—agents who had entered the country using false or forged passports.3 The data were so valuable that Shipley asked him to return the next day.

  Henderson encouraged Krivitsky to write more penetrating articles about Soviet Russia and Stalin, but Krivitsky was cautious. He knew he could still be a target for the KGB led by the murderous Nikolai Yezhov, who would be under pressure to eliminate all deserters from the Soviet cause. Confirmation of his fears came on March 7, 1939, when he was dining near Times Square with Lenin biographer David Schub, the editor of a New York Jewish daily.4 They had just ordered their meals when three men came in and sat at the nearest table. Krivitsky recognized Sergei Basoff, an experienced Soviet agent, and got up to leave. Basoff followed him to the cashier’s desk, where Krivitsky turned and confronted him.

  “Are you here to assassinate me?” Krivitsky challenged him.

  “No, no, I’m not. I’m here unofficially,” Basoff replied.

  “You just happen to turn up at this restaurant . . . ?”

  “All I want is a friendly chat.”

  Krivitsky knew enough about that kind of approach. It was a pretext to murder. He hurried out with Schub and along to the nearby offices of The New York Times. Basoff and his companions followed, but Krivitsky managed to escape in busy Time Square.

  This shock caused Krivitsky to follow up on Henderson’s encouragement to expose Stalinism. In April, a series of articles—at the considerable sum of $5,000 a piece—commenced in the Saturday Evening Post in an attempt to alert the United States to the menace of “Stalin’s Secret Service.” They lacked specifics, but Krivitsky said he would “withhold total exposure” until the State Department granted him residential status. Later, he bargained with the House Committee on Un-American Activities in order to stop his deportation.