Last of the Cold War Spies (48 page)

Straight’s views were right in line with the Kremlin’s. It wanted to stop the concentrated arming of Great Britain by the United States. Its scores of military bases the length and breadth of the tiny country was an attempt to confine any future conflict between the superpowers to Europe and away from the U.S. mainland.

Nixon was adamant. He wanted the British to have their own deterrent. He had always believed in showing as much strength as possible in dealing with the Russians. Great Britain’s closer proximity to Russia meant more pressure on it.

Both knew that no matter what the international political rhetoric, Britain would always be militarily dependent on the United States. The conversation ended with Nixon surprising Straight by saying he wanted to see Dartington, a desire that stunned the family.

After all the railing against Nixon since he first emerged as an ambitious senator in the late 1940s, Straight contrived to get along well with him. He even proposed him as a member of India House, the lunch club founded by Willard.
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Soon after this encounter, Straight and Rose flew to London and visited Dartington from October 11–14, 1963. According to files at Dartington, it was Straight’s second visit there since seeing the FBI, the other being a short trip in late June. In late October he and Rose took a plane to Greece for an unspecified meeting, which possibly concerned business for Rose with the shipping magnate, Stavros Niarchos.
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A melancholic Straight returned to Weynoke in early November 1963 with nothing to keep him occupied. He returned reluctantly to his uninspired and aimless novel writing as steady rain in Virginia drew a gray, dark autumn to a close.

While Straight was laboring with his story in his study on November 22, 1963, Lorraine, the laundress, came in sobbing. It was being reported on television that President Kennedy had been shot. Straight switched on the TV to see the reports from Dallas. Dorothy, his five-year-old daughter, who was home sick from school, began to cry. She was a school friend of Kennedy’s daughter Caroline. Dorothy asked why it couldn’t have been someone else. Straight, who said in his memoirs that he remained unemotional over the shocking incident, asked Dorothy whom she had in mind. Between sobs, she nominated Rockefeller and Khrushchev.
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In the days after the assassination, Straight was on the phone to the family in England, talking about the incident and how he felt about Kennedy. He told them of a party he had been to on November 17 in honor of the poised, vivacious Mary Meyer, who was a long-term friend of Straight’s and had formerly been married to Cord Meyer.

Mary’s family, the Pinchots, were wealthy and prominent. Mary’s father, Amos Pinchot, was a lawyer and a close friend of President Teddy Roosevelt. Her uncle, Gifford, was a two-term governor of Pennsylvania. Mary, an accomplished painter, went to Vassar, the elite all-women college, where she first met Kennedy. Straight told the Elmhirsts that Mrs. Pinchot informed him that the president had come to the Pinchot home to declare it a national monument so that he could bed Mary and another woman.
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Mary’s affair with Kennedy over the duration of his presidency has since been well documented. It is claimed that he found her more attractive than Jackie, both mentally and physically. Despite Kennedy’s serial philandering, this was said to be the one relationship that upset Jackie. Straight told the Elmhirsts he was reminded of Kennedy’s womanizing when he watched his funeral cortege. Straight viewed Jackie’s sadness as the work of a very good actress getting on with a polished performance, the implication being that she had no love, only hate, for her philandering husband.
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Despite his antipathy toward Kennedy, Straight seemed unsettled when he reflected on the horrific events of November 22 in his memoirs. Straight noted that the assassination ended the year for him.
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A
rthur Martin of MI5 flew to Washington in January 1964 to interview John Cairncross about the Philby, Burgess, and Maclean defections. He was surprised to be introduced to Straight by the FBI’s Sullivan at the Mayflower Hotel. The three chatted for twenty minutes and then Sullivan left.

Martin, regarded in the United Kingdom as self-made and earthy, was found by Straight to be “sophisticated and urbane” compared with the FBI agents with whom he had dealt. Straight told him the story he had given to the FBI. He considered Burgess to be Blunt’s recruiter and controller at Cambridge. The plot to send him to J. P. Morgan (the New York banking/investment group) reflected Burgess’s smart yet callous style.
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Martin asked for names of others recruited by Burgess and Blunt. Straight mentioned a deceased comrade. He also said he believed Leo Long, whom he had brought into the Apostles, may have joined the Cambridge network of spies. Martin was grateful, pointing out that this was the first “hard evidence” that MI5 had been able to obtain on Burgess and Blunt.

Martin had been one of MI5’s interrogators who interviewed Blunt in the 1950s. He was convinced that he would deny everything, even when told about his talking to Straight.
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Martin asked Straight if he would be prepared to confront Blunt. Straight claimed he said he was prepared to do anything required—even go to court to tell his side of events.
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These brave words were a long way from Straight’s refrain since 1948 that he was frightened to go public because of the humiliation to himself and his family. He had found the courage to step forward. For its part, MI5 would not dare bring prosecutions against Blunt thanks to his special protection. There would be no public airing of horrific sagas about KGB penetration of Cambridge, Oxford, the military, the foreign office, and the intelligence services. The Philby defection and Profumo scandal were enough for any government for at least a decade.

Yet at that moment, Martin and MI5 were excited. They seemed to have concrete leads at last. Martin hurried back to England, thrilled by his “coup.” Three months later, on April 23, 1964, he visited Blunt at his apartment at the Courtauld Institute in Portman Square. Martin told him he had evidence he was a Soviet recruiter at Cambridge and a KGB spy until the end of the war. Blunt denied it. Martin then mentioned that Straight had told them about him. Blunt remained ice-cool. His behavior indicated he had foreknowledge of Straight’s “evidence.” He would have learned of the “confession” from his close friends Victor and Tess Roths-child. They would have heard it from Dick White and/or the garrulous Peter Wright.

Blunt stared at Martin and didn’t respond.

Martin then hurried into offering him protection: “I’ve been authorized by the Attorney-General to give you a formal immunity from prosecution.”
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Blunt got up from his living room chair, poured himself a large Scotch, and turned to Martin. “It is true,” he said, without emotion.

The two men talked for a few minutes. Martin added a condition. The immunity deal stood if he had not been a spy recently. He would not be prosecuted if, as Straight had indicated, he had only been a spy until 1945, the end of World War II.

This was the standard line that all those accused would claim. They had worked for the Russians only during the war to ensure victory over the Nazis. How could anyone call them traitors for such activity? They had not spied against Great Britain and the United States, but rather for the Russians to help them overcome Hitler. Blunt, Cairncross, Long, Burgess, Maclean, and Straight had all maintained the same argument.
Rather than criminals and traitors, they considered themselves great patriots, worthy of acclaim.

Martin, relieved to have what he saw as a confession, accepted Blunt’s assurance that he had not spied since 1945. At subsequent meetings, he was also pleased to see that responses and statements by Blunt and Straight were the same except for a few anomalies.

Blunt, the more “senior” KGB man, went further. He admitted recruiting Leo Long, which Straight claimed he suspected. Blunt also named John Cairncross. Straight had mentioned Alister Watson, without indicating directly that he was a spy. Blunt had added to suspicions about Watson. This tallied with Philby’s “confession” in Beirut to British intelligence’s Nicholas Elliott.

Thus three men pointed the finger at Watson. All research by others, and my own investigation, found Watson was innocent. He had been recruited and was at points in his career as a scientist in place in government employment deemed highly secret. But when the pressure was on, Watson could not deliver. He refused to pass on intelligence, much to the anger of his KGB controls and the contempt of fellow members of the ring—hence their willingness to cause him more angst by suggesting that he was a KGB spy.

Philby had also claimed that Blunt was not a spy. In the excitement of the early apparent breakthrough, Martin and his partner in the investigation, Peter Wright, grabbed at the correlations and ignored the anomalies.

The first seed of doubt came from Wright’s initial encounter with Blunt. His tape-recorder broke down during a question-and-answer session. Wright knelt to thread a loose tape spool, which had jammed the recorder. Blunt remarked to Martin: “Isn’t it fascinating to watch a technical expert do his stuff?”
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Wright looked up and glared. He had never met Blunt before. The comment showed Wright that Blunt knew who he was. Rothschild, according to KGB and British intelligence sources, was most likely the one who informed Blunt that he would be interrogated by Wright, a scientist from MI5’s technical section. Rothschild had befriended Wright since 1958, going out of his way to make contact with him and—along with Tess—assist his work at MI5. Wright had divulged every secret he knew at MI5 to the Rothschilds.
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The ring members, from Blunt and the Rothschilds in the United Kingdom; to Cairncross in Italy; to Philby and their controller, Modin,
in Moscow, were combining in a major deception to avoid detection of their widespread activities. They had all continued well into the Cold War.

When the months slipped by, MI5 began to wonder if Blunt was divulging all. They suspected he was covering up. Martin questioned Long and suggested he would not be prosecuted if he cooperated. With this virtual offer of immunity, he did admit to passing Blunt information during the war, but nothing more. He too denied spying for the Russians in the Cold War. Cairncross, who had been suspected and accused by British intelligence of being a KGB agent in 1951, made similar admissions when Martin visited him in Rome. Once more it was suggested he would not face prosecution if he confessed.

Further doubts began to seep into the investigators’ minds. They had dead agents named by Blunt and Straight. The only new, living names were Long and Cairncross. The latter had been known, for all practical purposes, for thirteen years. Like Long, he admitted to little. The only person to verify how little was Blunt. It was a small haul after such promise was offered when Straight spoke up. The other concern that began to dawn on MI5’s tenacious sleuths was the fact that even if they uncovered something sensational, the traitors could never be prosecuted. Wright was first to express the thought that no one could be charged because, for example, Long would call Blunt as a witness. This would lead to questions about why the Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures had not been himself charged. Wright and Martin realized prosecution of any member of the Cambridge ring was an impossibility.

This frustrated them. They tried ways around the roadblock of immunity. First, they began a good cop, bad cop routine in interviews with Blunt. This was done in the hope of squeezing out more that could lead to disclosures of such significance that they could not be ignored. Martin appeared friendly and reasonable, while Wright became “nasty.”
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Yet MI5’s director-general, Roger Hollis, warned against pressuring Blunt too much. He said he feared he might defect. This would be more embarrassment for British intelligence and the government. But Hollis, a true Whitehall bureaucrat, knew that Blunt had to be protected.

The point was driven home when Wright was summoned to attend a briefing at Buckingham Palace by Michael Adeane, the queen’s private secretary. “He assured me that the Palace was willing to cooperate in any enquires the [intelligence] Service thought fit,” Wright wrote in his book,
Spycatcher
. “The Queen,” he said, “has been fully informed about Sir Anthony, and is quite content for him to be dealt with in any way which gets at the truth.” There was only one caveat. “From time to time,” said Adeane, “you may find Blunt referring to an assignment he undertook on behalf of the Palace—a visit to Germany at the end of the war. Please do not pursue this matter. Strictly speaking, it is not relevant to considerations of national security.”
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Restricted by this information and by directions from their superiors, Wright and Martin battled on. Blunt’s flat was bugged. Recorded conversation made it clear he was aware of the bugging. They followed the leads provided by Blunt and Cairncross, which led to other “suspects.” All were found to be inconsequential; some were investigated and cleared. Frustration and doubts grew about the veracity of what MI5 had been told from the beginning. They began to consider ways of putting more pressure on Blunt.

Straight tried selling
Happy and Hopeless
, his thinly veiled personal short novel about a sexless love affair. Publishers rejected it. Straight was not surprised.

It must have been a disappointment to Knopf. He would have been puzzled by Straight’s lack of will to write after the considerable research and construction efforts by Straight and his editors put into the first two novels.

Straight tinkered with the structure but came to see it as a failure. Distractions such as a trip with Rose to London and Dartington in mid-May 1964, and thoughts of leaving Weynoke, his Virginia farm, took him away from his writing.

Straight returned to Virginia mid-year and thought about leaving, but not selling, Weynoke and moving to Georgetown. The Straights liked the look of Jackie Kennedy’s N Street house, where she had lived since the assassination. She had purchased it for $175,000. The agents, J. F. Begg Inc. Realty Co., were responding to journalists’ queries when they said it was worth “in the vicinity of $265,000” because of “improvements.” The owner before Jackie (Jimmy Gibson) had originally asked $325,000 for the place. He had sold it to her for the much lower price of $175,000, perhaps, as suggested at the time, out of compassion. She could hardly
have put it back on the market six months after moving in for twice the purchase figure. Hence the impression from the agent of the compromise price and the excuse of the modification costs.

It had been built in 1825 by Thomas Beall, son of Ninian Beall, and was of historic importance. At $265,000, and anything less, it was considered a bargain. Straight was well aware of Jackie’s intention to leave Washington and avoid the stares of endless tourists wandering N Street with their cameras. No other buyers, it seemed, had a chance. Straight’s discreet, close, personal relationship with Jackie meant that the home was his for the taking. Bin Straight flew down from Chilmark to Washington in early August to view the house, which she liked. Straight wondered if the Kennedy presence might haunt it and make it a somber place. He was uncertain about moving in. But he was looking at an opportunity he would find difficult to refuse.