Last of the Cold War Spies (22 page)

I’m not a journalist at heart, he told his family. He felt he could be a politician. Yet not just any politician.

The FBI file on Straight grew early in 1941 and included quotes from a February 15 article in the
Saturday Evening Post
called “Muddled Millions, Capitalist Angels of Left-Wing Propaganda.” This named
The New
Republic
and
The Nation
as the two journals that had “given most aid and prestige to the Communists in the country.” The FBI estimated that the Straight family had subsidized
The New Republic
to the annual tune of $100,000.
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The report went on to add that “these communistically inclined publications [had] benefited from the Straight fortune to the extent of approximately $2,500,000.” The agent filing the report had simply multiplied the number of years—around twenty-six—since the magazine’s birth by $100,000 to arrive at the figure. This was the FBI at its feverish antiliberal best, but the report at the beginning of Straight’s file did—for the wrong reasons—draw further attention to Straight and Dorothy, whose name also headed the file. Hoover, in his wild lashing out, had yet to distinguish betwee n Dorothy’s genuine liberalism and Straight’s KGB links. By coincidence, and Straight’s courage in letting anti-FBI attacks filter
into
The New Republic,
Hoover had stumbled onto something far bigger than he would have dreamt. In effect, the opposing camps had underestimated each other. Each would discover this miscalculation in the next decade.

Despite the file, Straight was skipping away from Hoover’s watchers with alacrity while drawing himself further into KGB networks. In March, French politician and secret KGB agent Pierre Cot (six times minister of air and twice minister of commerce between the wars), who was in exile in the United States, made contact with Straight via Green. (Cot would continue his secret work in a few months’ time when taken over by Vasili Zarubin, the chief KGB resident in the United States. Zarubin reported to Moscow that he had signed on Cot as “agent DAEDALUS,” who in the mid-1990s would be verified as a KGB man through the Venona decrypts.)

Soon after, Cot linked Straight with a “Louis Dolivet” who stayed at Straight’s house in Alexandria for a night. Straight had first seen Dolivet, another Comintern/KGB man, in Paris in July 1937, on Straight’s last vacation with his girlfriend Herta Thiele. Blunt had suggested Straight attend a rally for the World Committee for the Relief of Victims of German Fascism, where Dolivet spoke passionately against Hitler. The committee was a front run by the German communist Willi Muenzenberg, the KGB’s pay-off man. Kim Philby had met him via the Cambridge network controls a few years earlier.

Straight claimed to be unaware that Dolivet was, like him, a KGB agent. He also made the spurious claim that had he known, he would “probably” have never introduced Dolivet to his sister Beatrice at an Overseas Press Club banquet in Washington. She was furthering her acting career but fell for Dolivet, who could see the advantages of marrying a rich, communist-leaning Straight. Apart from the money, he thought it would boost his chances of staying in the United States. They did marry a year later, although Dolivet—a Romanian whose real name was Ludovic Brecher—had trouble gaining citizenship. Dolivet had started a magazine in Europe,
Free World
. Thanks to Straight and his relationship with Beatrice, Dolivet received a big investment of $250,000 to start another front paper,
United Nations World
, designed to support—from a Soviet perspective—the idea of a United Nations.

Earlier Straight had managed to bluff the head of the federal government’s visa division, Ruth Shipley, into giving a Spanish-born communist,
Gustavo Duran, a visa for the United States, where he and his wife Bronte (Bin Straight’s sister) wished to live. Duran had been a general on the republican side during the Spanish Civil War.

Straight had let the conservative Shipley know that he was the son of Willard, whom she admired as a great U.S. consul.
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When she examined Duran’s papers, she noticed he fought in Spain. She asked which side he was on.

Straight replied deceptively that he had been on the “right” side. Shipley, believing he meant “right-wing,” signed the papers. Straight also sponsored the entry of both Duran’s friend and comrade-in-arms, communists Gustave Regler, whom Straight later described to the FBI as a Trotskyite, and Stephen Spender.

The Durans moved into Old Westbury for a time, as did the Dolivets, who would later introduce Straight to actors Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. Over time Welles became “politically educated” by Dolivet.

“I was fascinated by him,” Welles remarked, “and very fond of him.”
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Dolivet worked on Welles, hoping he would develop his political instincts, which were hard left, although Welles never admitted being a communist as such. Dolivet thought he might have a promising future in public life.

“Oh, he had great plans,” Welles remarked. “He was going to organize it so that in fifteen years I would win the Nobel Prize (for peaceful political activism).”
¹⁸

Dolivet soon had him making speeches at
Free World
dinners and functions and to politicians in Washington. Welles went on to address the Overseas Press Club and the Soviet-American Congress. The actor was willingly being used as a front for communist propaganda dressed up as liberal international thought.

Welles would later give serious consideration to a career as a senator, especially when his three other careers in film, radio, and theater faltered. In the meantime, he sharpened his ideas on paper in the
Free World
magazine, which was urging international cooperation through a UN organization.

This development came on the heels of Welles making
Citizen Kane
, which had caused Hoover to open a file on the actor at about the time the Straight dossier began in 1941. Kane had been loosely based on the life of right-wing newspaperman William Randolph Hearst. The film and the subsequent furor over its portrayal of the newspaper baron drew much
comment in
The New Republic
, which supported it. The magazine included a piece on February 24 by a mysterious “Michael Sage” titled “Hearst over Hollywood.” (Straight denied it was written by him.) The article attacked Hearst’s efforts to stop distribution of the film. It was all grist for Hoover’s burgeoning files on Straight and Welles, two new bureau enemies.

Hitler made his first major military error of World War II when his army crossed the Russian border and headed east on June 22, 1941. The impact buoyed rather than depressed Straight, who claimed to have been “besieged by new found friends” now that the center of communist power—Russia—was united against (rather than being officially partners with) the Nazis. He picked up the tempo of speeches at rallies in many federal agencies organized by the United Federal Workers Union and demanded with even greater fervor that the United States enter the war.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese provided the stimulus needed by bombing Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt declared war on Japan and Germany. The United States—as the Russians and the British had long wanted— were in the fray. But Straight, the fierce advocate of fighting fascism, was not. Instead he decided to have a child, which would delay his entry into the services.

In December, Esmond Romilly, the radical nephew of Winston Churchill, was shot down by the Luftwaffe over the North Sea. Straight invited Romilly’s wife Decca to Old Westbury for New Year’s Eve. On New Year’s Day they received a call from the White House. Churchill was there for secret talks with Roosevelt now that they were combining their fighting forces against the Germans, Italians, and Japanese. Churchill wanted to give his condolences to Decca in person. Straight and Bin drove her to see him. Mrs. Roosevelt met with Straight and told him she had been reading his articles in
The New Republic
. He found it an inspiring way to commence 1942.

Soon after Straight’s visit to the White House, he had mixed feelings about the return of his control Michael Green to Washington, D.C., for
his second tour of the United States. Straight’s fears that he might be liquidated proved to be unfounded. Yet Green’s return was confirmation that Straight was still considered by the KGB to be one of them.

When they met, Straight told him about his plans to write a book after completing the building of a new home in Weynoke, Virginia, and overseeing the design of the garden. The book, his first, titled
Let This Be the
Last War
, was inspired by the governments of twenty-six nations signing the Declaration of the United Nations early in 1942. It was no more than a statement of intent, yet Straight saw it as a vehicle for portraying a world free of war, from a Soviet perspective. Green was not impressed, but his agent was persuasive and because of his financial independence had more maneuverability than the control’s other spies. His privileged position meant he could put aside his work for
The New Republic
to indulge his intellectual aspirations. Green would have been frustrated by Straight’s whims, but there was little he could do, short of strong-arm tactics, to make him accede to his directives. Straight’s family trust money was being used to help many communist fronts in the United States. His connections and pull with, for instance, the visa and passport departments at State made him useful. Besides this, Green was aware that he came out of the Cambridge ring in England, which was regarded as “special” by the KGB Moscow Center.

Straight wrote during the summer after he and Bin had taken up residence at Weynoke. His book used the idea of a proposed United Nations to show how it should deal with the collapse of colonialism in a postwar world that would urgently need a worldwide policy of reconstruction. In effect, it was a communist blueprint for a postwar universe. In those secluded months of writing, Straight’s mind drifted back to his not-so-distant Cambridge days in developing a Marxist treatise. There was much groveling to Stalin, the ultimate reader, with quotes from the ever-sage and avuncular leader.

Stalin was alleged to have told British newspaper proprietor Lord Beaverbrook in Moscow that it was not enough to turn out arms for factories. He, meaning the British government, had to keep up and create the spirit that enabled people to arm themselves. There were mandatory bashes at capitalism, especially Western companies that prospered from arms production when they were about to fail through inefficiency. Straight also provided prayers for a coming communist China. He saw the deepening divide in that nation between landlords and peasants and
between the Kuomintang and liberal China. His writing provided many bland homilies about a world government of sorts. Only when such a utopian government was operating could any country progress to increased democratic freedoms.
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