Michael Whitney Straight

Michael Whitney Straight (September 1, 1916 to January 4, 2004) was a magazine publisher, novelist and arts administrator from the Whitney family, the son of Willard Straight and Dorothy Payne Whitney. While an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge he was recruited for Soviet intelligence by Anthony Blunt; the Soviet file on him carried the cover name "Nigel." In 1963 he disclosed that recruitment to the United States government, which passed it to British security.¹

Parents and Childhood

His father was an investment banker with J. P. Morgan & Company, who died of septic pneumonia while serving with the American Expeditionary Forces in France in 1918. His mother, an heiress, had started The New Republic with her husband in 1914. In 1925 she married Leonard Knight Elmhirst, and the couple ran Dartington Hall, the progressive school in Devon. Michael was the third and youngest child; his brother Whitney Straight became a racing driver and head of the British Overseas Airways Corporation, and his sister Beatrice Straight an actress.¹ The FBI recorded his birth as September 1, 1916, at Southampton, Long Island, while the New York Times gave New York City.¹² He attended the Lincoln School in New York and Dartington Hall, then spent a year at the London School of Economics before going on to Cambridge in 1934.¹ He told the FBI in 1963 that his father died two years after his birth, that he was taken to England and raised there, and that his early life was that of an orphan who lacked no material thing.² An FBI summary of his military record lists the London School of Economics in 1934 and Cambridge University from 1934 to 1937.³

Cambridge and the Apostles

Straight told the FBI that he entered Cambridge in the fall of 1934 and was domiciled at Trinity College. He described a warm and lasting friendship with John Cornford, two years his senior, a confirmed Communist who was killed in Spain in late 1936. In his second year Straight joined a student Communist group of about twenty-five members, which he said was headed by Cornford and by James Klugmann. He was also admitted to the Cambridge Apostles, the secret discussion society whose members included Guy Burgess and Blunt.² The Times reported that he joined the Communist Party, as he said in his memoir, in sympathy with its Popular Front aims, and became part of the circle around John Maynard Keynes.¹ Straight told the FBI that he took part in the student march of May Day 1936, that he made unsolicited gifts of about $2,000 to the Daily Worker in 1936, and that he gave money directly to Harry Pollitt, then secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain. In August 1936 he took part in a student tour of the Soviet Union organized by John Madge, on which, he said, Blunt also travelled.⁴ The abstract of his 1982 oral history lists him as president of the Socialist Society.⁵

Recruitment by Anthony Blunt

Straight told the FBI that after Cornford's death became known, Blunt invited him to his rooms and suggested that Straight make a comparable sacrifice. Blunt asked him to give up Communist work in England and turn to the international field, and said the Communist International wanted a man at Morgan and Company to supply economic reports. Straight protested that he was not cut out to be a banker; about three weeks later Blunt told him that his protests had been rejected, and he sailed for the United States, where he wrote a further letter of protest to Blunt from the ship. Before he left, Blunt tore a small ink drawing of Straight's sweetheart in half and kept one piece. Straight could not recall whether an oral parole was also arranged. He told the FBI that he believed Burgess was the person directing Blunt, although Blunt declined to say so.⁶

In a 1981 telephone interview with United Press International, Straight placed Blunt's approach in February 1937 and said: "Blunt tried to recruit me as a Soviet agent and have me return to United States and join the J.P. Morgan company." He added: "I flatly refused. I said I didn't want any part."⁷ The Washington Post reported the same month that Blunt had tried to recruit him at Cambridge in 1937, and quoted him that "they" had decided to accelerate their timetable "because of the death of my closest friend."⁸ The Washington Star reported on March 28, 1981 that the approach came less than two weeks after Cornford's death and that Blunt wanted him to "infiltrate" Wall Street.⁹ In a January 1983 radio interview he described the instruction in nearly the same terms: "What they wanted me to do was not to go into government, but to go to Wall Street, go back to my father's old firm, J.P. Morgan & Company."¹⁰

Contact with Michael Green

In December 1937, Straight told the FBI, an unknown man telephoned him and identified himself as Michael Green. Straight was certain the call had originated with Blunt. The two had a couple of meetings in New York City, where Green appeared to be testing Straight's opinions rather than making demands, and later three or four meetings in Washington at intervals of about a month, including two lunches. Green disapproved of Straight's friendships with two White Russian drama teachers and with Roger Baldwin of the American Civil Liberties Union.¹¹

Straight described Green as about thirty-five to forty years old in 1937, five feet ten inches tall, with thick black hair, who spoke good English but was not a native American; Straight believed him to be Russian. Straight said Green's wife, whom he met once at Longchamps restaurant, was introduced as Helen Green and appeared American. In 1963 the FBI showed Straight photographs, and he identified one of William Grienke as the man he had known as Green. A confidential source of known reliability identified the same photograph as Iskhak Akhmerov, a former Soviet intelligence officer whom the source had first known in Moscow in 1931. Grienke entered the United States in August 1935 on a fraudulent passport, with an affidavit from Alexander Koral as identifying witness.¹² Straight said Green once told him that if he needed to reach Green he could do so through Koral, whose address in Brooklyn he could not remember; shown photographs of Koral and Koral's wife Helen, he identified neither.¹³

The Wilson Center's concordance to the Vassiliev notebooks and the Venona decrypts lists "Green, Michael" and "Greinke, William" as pseudonyms of Akhmerov, with references to Vassiliev's White Notebook #3 (pp. 75 to 76) and Yellow Notebook #2 (p. 83).¹⁴ Allen Weinstein wrote in 1997 that Akhmerov's dispatches concerned Straight, "who was then involved with Akhmerov and the NKVD."¹⁵

The Nigel File in the Vassiliev Notebooks

Alexander Vassiliev, who took notes in the archives of the Russian foreign intelligence service in the 1990s, copied passages from the Soviet file on Straight, "File 58380 v.1 'Nigel'." The Wilson Center concordance lists "Nigel" as the cover name of Straight in the Black Notebook, White Notebooks #1 to #3 and Yellow Notebook #2.¹⁴ The passages below are Vassiliev's summaries and quotations as published in English translation; bracketed comments are his.¹⁶

An excerpt from a report by "Madchen" (identified in the notes as Burgess) dated January 1937 described Straight as one of the leaders of the Party at Cambridge, "an extremely devoted member of the Party and completely dependable"; a February 1937 report put his support of the Daily Worker at "nearly 1,500 pounds a year." A letter from "Man" (spelled "Mally") to the Center of January 29, 1937 stated: "Let me direct your attention to Michael Straight." A letter of February 16, 1937 reporting Burgess's account carries Vassiliev's bracketed note that Burgess recruited Straight through Anthony Blunt and that the cover name "Nigel" had already been given. The same report stated that Cornford's death was "the one circumstance in our favor" for removing Straight from open Party work, and described a plan, proposed by "A.B.," under which Straight would appear crushed by the death, withdraw from Cambridge politics, and go to the United States, and leave the Party under a pretext.¹⁷

On March 24, 1937 "Man" reported that "Nigel" had gone to America on vacation and "wants to work with us very much." A report from "Stephan" dated July 9, 1937, after two meetings with Straight, described a very inexperienced young man who "thinks he works for the Comintern, and it is necessary to keep him in this illusion for the time being." The notes record that Straight left for the United States on August 8, 1937, after giving 500 pounds for the Communist newspaper, with instructions for a first meeting in New York at his mother's apartment at 1172 Park Avenue, to be introduced by a letter signed "Anthony" and the greeting "I am here from Anthony. He says hello". On September 11, 1937 the Center wrote to "Jung" (the notes identify Jung as Akhmerov's cover name in the 1930s) to contact "Nigel."¹⁸

Reports from "Jung" in late 1937 and 1938 describe regular meetings with Straight in New York and Washington. They record that Straight gave "Jung" $2,000 as quarterly Party dues; that he offered $10,000 to $12,000 of spare money, which the Center ordered "Jung" to collect; that in January 1938 he had joined the State Department and was preparing a report on armaments from ambassadors' reports; and that on March 26, 1938 the Center wrote that he "could be a very valuable source" and should be "EDUCATED." A "Jung" report of June 28, 1938 stated that through his job Straight had made contact with Hiss, whom he described as "an interesting employee with a senior post" and "very ideologically progressive."¹⁹ Straight later wrote to the New York Review of Books that he did not offer to recruit Hiss; Weinstein replied that the passage in his book should have read that Straight "identified and described Hiss to Itzhak Akhmerov."¹⁵

The notes record that in February 1938 "Adler from Treasury" approached Straight to draw him into the American Communist apparatus, that Straight "categorically denied" being a Communist, and that the Center ordered that he not be connected with it. Straight told the FBI of a summer 1938 telephone call from a man calling himself Solomon who said he worked for the Treasury Department; he identified Solomon Adler from photographs.¹⁹²⁰

In March 1939 the Center wrote that "Nigel has the potential to be a major agent." In a 1939 passage, "Jung" reported that Straight had delivered $1,700, part of it for the Communist Party of the United States and part for Spain, and had obtained from a State Department colleague named Coe a 102-page report on the Munich Conference. After the Nazi-Soviet pact of August 1939 "Jung" reported that Straight openly criticized Soviet policy and stayed away from meetings for a month; on October 25, 1939 he wrote that he had "managed to straighten N-l out." The notes record that "Jung" left for the Soviet Union at the end of 1939, that the legal station kept up the connection with virtually no work, that a Center cable of November 9, 1939 directed that "Nigel" be passed to "Igor" because of his "recent hesitation," that on July 15, 1941 "Chap" met Straight, who said he had resigned from the State Department and had not received the appointment to the London embassy he had counted on, and that a report of February 26, 1942 stated that if "Madchen" and "Tony" were British intelligence agents, the "recruiting" of Straight "could also have been a cunning maneuver by Eng. Intelligence," after which, in Vassiliev's bracketed words, the decision was made to continue work with him, and that a report of June 3, 1942 attributed to "Maxim" the view that Straight had been "ideologically corrupted" and recorded the anti-Soviet influence of Dolivet, "who is married to N's sister."²¹

A report of August 10, 1942 from the New York station recorded that after repeated missed meetings contact with "Nigel" had finally been established, that he "has an excellent understanding" of the attention given him, and that he was "very busy with his book"; the same passage records his recommendation of a friend, William Sherwood, as someone who could be "very useful." A later report summarized in White Notebook #1 states: "In 1943 he was drafted into the army and there has been no communication with him since then." A Yellow Notebook entry of March 2, 1943 states that "the army recruit 'Nigel'" would report his location by telephone or mail.²²²³ A Black Notebook entry on the most valuable agents in the United States in 1940 and 1941 describes "Nigel" as "son of an American millionaire," who "Gave valuable materials from the State Department" and was "Deactivated." A plan approved on December 16, 1943 directs: "Deactivate agents without future prospects (Zero, Informator, Liza, Nigel)." A cable of July 10, 1947 records that "Oleg" learned that "the wealthy economist Michael Straight is in Wallace's inner circle." A list of agents with whom the Washington station was asked to renew contact in 1948 to 1950 includes "'Nigel' M. Straight. Publisher of the 'New Republic.' Connection was not renewed."²³ Straight told the FBI in 1963 that his relationship with Green ended in the autumn of 1942 and that he was never afterward approached by anyone representing Soviet intelligence.²⁴

Government Service, 1938 to 1941

Straight told the FBI that Thomas Corcoran arranged a post for him at the United States Department of the Interior, where he wrote speeches for members of the Cabinet. In 1938 he worked without salary in the State Department under an economic adviser whom the memorandum names as Herbert Pels (the Vassiliev notes name his superior as "Herbert Feis or Feiz"), preparing a report on the economic consequences of European rearmament for Cordell Hull. He said that Eleanor Roosevelt helped him obtain the assignment.¹³¹⁹ He told the FBI he gave Green two official State Department documents, one on trade with Italy and one a mimeographed "Political Summary" for Foreign Service personnel, which Green took to have copied; he described them as unimportant and possibly marked "Confidential." He said he wrote a memorandum for Green on the Nazi-Soviet pact urging the Soviets not to undermine France and Great Britain.²⁵ The New York Times, summarizing the memoir in 2004, reported that Straight insisted the only papers he passed to the Soviet agent he knew as Green were political and economic analyses written by himself.¹ In 1981 he told UPI that in the United States a Soviet agent approached him in 1938 and "I gave him six to eight political articles of my own, many critical of the Soviet Union."⁷

Straight told the FBI that on August 27, 1940 James Dunn appointed him division assistant in the Division of European Affairs, a post he held until May 21, 1941. The Bureau's military-record summary of 1968 gives State Department service from January 1, 1938 to March 9, 1939 and from September 28, 1940 to February 28, 1941, Interior from March 1939 to September 1940, and "Editorial Publications Incorporated, Publishers" in New York from March 1941 to February 1943; a September 1969 field report from St. Louis gives the Public Works Administration from May 1, 1939 to March 15, 1940, Interior from March 16 to August 27, 1940, and State from August 27, 1940 to May 21, 1941.³¹³²⁶

Straight told the FBI that Burgess came to Washington in about 1940, telephoned him, and lunched with him at the Little Garden Tea House. Burgess said he was completely out of touch with his friends and asked whether Straight could put him back in touch. Straight said he made no comment and changed the subject, did not report the meeting to any authority, and did not believe he told Green about it; Burgess had supper at his house that night, which Straight recalled as tense.²⁷

Wartime Service and the New Republic

Straight enlisted in the Enlisted Reserve Corps of the United States Army Air Forces on November 24, 1942, reported for active duty on February 2, 1943, was discharged as an aviation cadet on March 11, 1944 to accept a commission, and was relieved from active duty on October 28, 1945, according to a 1968 summary of his record; his occupation was listed as pilot with over 1,000 flying hours. The record contains recommendation letters from Abe Fortas, then Under Secretary of the Interior (October 21, 1942), from William S. Youngman Jr., president of China Defense Supplies (October 17, 1942), and from Major General Frank Ross McCoy, president of the Foreign Policy Association (October 9, 1942).³

His book Make This the Last War was published by Harcourt, Brace; the Bureau's 1963 memorandum gives the end of 1942 and its records of the Library of Congress give 1943. Straight told the FBI that he had discussed it with Maxim Litvinov, then the Soviet ambassador in Washington, and prepared a memorandum on it for Green, that the publisher gave a book party to which Earl Browder was invited, and that Green had wanted him to meet Browder.²⁴²⁸ He told the FBI that he did not hear from Green between May 1941 and the autumn of 1942, when Green called him shortly before he enlisted; they met at the Jamaica, New York railroad station, and at his last meetings he told Green that he was going into the Air Corps and that their relationship was at an end. He said he never afterward saw or heard from Green or was approached by anyone representing the Communist underground or Soviet intelligence.²⁴

The Bureau's records give differing accounts of his New Republic work. A December 1957 memorandum states that he resigned from government service in 1941, became Washington correspondent of the magazine, and in June 1943 became its editor, and that in October 1946 he hired Henry A. Wallace as editor.²⁹ A records brief lists "1941 - 43 an editor, New Republic." A 1969 summary describes him as a contributing editor until about 1956 and as president of the William C. Whitney Foundation, and a 1969 memorandum states that he was editor and publisher after the war.³⁰³¹ He was described as editor and publisher, and "after his mother's withdrawal of support of the magazine he enlisted new patrons and gradually ended his connection." A New Republic publisher interviewed in 1969 told the Bureau that Straight's parents had set up a fund that founded the magazine in 1914 and that it was used until 1954, when Gilbert A. Harrison bought a controlling interest.¹³²

Straight told the FBI that in England in about 1946 he attended a meeting of the Apostles at which Burgess spoke, and that Burgess and Blunt asked to see him at a club where Burgess was a member; a bitter argument followed in which he expressed his disillusionment with everything Russian and Communist. On the same trip he discussed the American proposal to share atomic energy with Pollitt, after speaking to Margot Heinemann, who had been Cornford's girlfriend. In early 1947, he said, he lunched with Burgess at the Savoy; Burgess said he was working as secretary to Hector McNeil, and asked whether he could pass on to his "friends" Straight's statement that America was approaching complete frustration with the Soviets. Straight told the FBI that he said he could.²⁷ In the 1940s Straight's wife Belinda gave the names of Blunt and Burgess to her analyst, Dr. Jennie Welderhall, wife of a British Embassy official, so that they could be passed to the British government.²⁷

Burgess, 1951 and the British Embassy

Straight told the FBI that in 1951 or 1952, as he left the British Embassy in Washington, he met Burgess, who said he was connected with the Embassy on special work, and that he told Burgess to resign from British government service within three months or he would report him; shortly afterward Burgess fled. The New York Times reported the same encounter as occurring on a Washington street corner in 1951, with Straight assuming that Burgess was running a spy ring out of the Embassy and warning him to stop or be exposed; Burgess then defected with Donald Maclean.¹²⁷ Asked by the FBI why he had not reported Burgess earlier, Straight said that he had considered it many times but was afraid, mindful of Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley and of the publicity of hearings and trials with injury to his wife and five children; he said he had once gone to the British Information Service and said he knew Burgess, but the man on duty told him many witnesses knew Burgess and Straight left without giving pertinent facts.³³ In 1981 he told UPI that after Burgess defected he went to the British Embassy in Washington to tell them about Blunt's recruitment effort, "but was turned away."⁷

The 1963 Disclosure and Who Sent Him to the FBI

Straight was interviewed by FBI agents in Washington on June 18, 1963, and the Bureau's memorandum of June 25 sets out his account; he told the agents that he was glad to have divulged the information.³³ Accounts of how he came to the Bureau differ.

Cartha DeLoach of the Bureau recorded that on September 17, 1969 he told Egil Krogh, who had telephoned from John Ehrlichman's office at the White House, that "Bobby Kennedy had sent this man over to the FBI in June of 1963 to be interviewed relative to his questionable background." The memorandum adds that the effort of Robert Kennedy, then attorney general, "was merely an attempt to get this man's record straightened out." On October 15, 1969 DeLoach wrote that the first time the Bureau talked to Straight was in June 1963 "when Bobby Kennedy sent him to the FBI."³¹

In a 1981 telephone interview Straight told UPI that in 1963 he went to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., then a White House aide, because President John F. Kennedy had asked him to serve on the National Endowment for the Arts and he wanted to ensure his record was clear; UPI reported that "Schlesinger sent him to the FBI, which in turn notified the British Secret Service."⁷ In an interview with the Washington Post the same month he said he had revealed his knowledge about Blunt to attorney general Robert Kennedy in 1963 after learning that the president planned to name him to the newly formed Endowment for the Arts, adding that he "had ruled myself out for the job" because of what government security checks were likely to disclose.⁸

In a radio interview on January 26, 1983 the host, Fred Fiske, put the sequence as follows, and Straight assented. Straight said that the arts council appointment "triggered it, when President Kennedy asked me to do that," adding that it "would have become the Endowment." Fiske said that Straight had "confided in Arthur Schlesinger about it, and he sent you to Bobby Kennedy." Straight: "Robert Kennedy. Right." Fiske: "Who sent you to the FBI." Straight: "Correct."¹⁰

The New York Times obituary in 2004 stated that Straight, offered a top arts post in the Kennedy administration and "fearing a background check," went to Schlesinger, "who in turn directed him to the Justice Department," and that his talks with the FBI and British intelligence led to the unmasking of Blunt. It reported that Straight turned down the Kennedy post.¹ Straight's 1982 oral history for Columbia University lists "decision to refuse chairmanship" and "cooperation with Federal Bureau of Investigation and British Intelligence, 1964" among its topics.⁵ Critics on the right, the Times reported, accused him of "confessing to the F.B.I. only to clear his career path."¹

On January 17, 1983, Sir Robert Armstrong of the Cabinet Office minuted the prime minister's office that "the lead which led to Anthony Blunt's confession in 1964 was a statement by an American, Mr Michael Whitney Straight, towards the end of 1963 that he had been recruited by Mr Blunt as an agent of the KGB when he was at Cambridge before the war." The minute states that the Security Service had seen the manuscript of Straight's autobiography, that it contained "no information which is not already known to the Security Service or which might be regarded as particularly damaging to the interests of the Security Service," and that it was to be serialised in the Observer. The prime minister's private secretary noted on January 18 that the prime minister had seen the minute.³⁴

Straight told UPI in 1981 that the FBI notified the British Secret Service, that the British had already been questioning Blunt, that he agreed to confront Blunt in their presence, and that Blunt asked to see him alone for fifteen minutes first. He said he went to Blunt's apartment in April 1964 and Blunt said: "Thank God you did this. I couldn't do it myself." In return for confessing, the Washington Post reported him as saying, Blunt received immunity from prosecution.⁷⁸ The Washington Star's account, of an interview with Straight the day before, was that he had offered to go to England and confront Blunt personally and, if need be, take him to court.⁹ In the 1983 interview Fiske said that Blunt had "told you that he was relieved," and Straight answered: "Yes." Fiske added that Straight had a fifteen-minute private meeting with Blunt before the British intelligence officers came in.¹⁰ Blunt's confession and immunity are dated 1964 in the catalogue of the United Kingdom National Archives, whose file KV 2/4705, on Blunt, covers February 28 to June 19, 1964 and describes him as having been given immunity from prosecution in exchange for information about fellow agents; the catalogue description does not name Straight.³⁵ Blunt lost his knighthood after Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher disclosed his past to Parliament in November 1979.⁸ In a 1983 interview Straight said: "I've named all the ones I know to the FBI and to British intelligence."¹⁰

Deputy Chairmanship of the National Endowment for the Arts, 1969

The White House's request for an investigation of Straight, received by the Bureau on August 27, 1969, concerned a presidential appointment whose position was not stated.³⁶ On September 3, 1969 President Richard Nixon announced the appointment of Nancy Hanks as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and added: "I anticipate that soon she will be joined by a deputy of equal stature." Hanks was confirmed by the Senate on October 2 and sworn in on October 6, 1969.³⁷³⁸ The Bureau's special inquiry was sent to Ehrlichman under a letter from J. Edgar Hoover on September 11, 1969. The summary memorandum of September 10 describes his service on the boards of the American Veterans Committee, Amnesty International of the United States, the National Parks Association, the Washington Theater Club and the Washington chapter of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; his divorce; and reports from interviews, including Senators Jacob Javits and Charles Goodell, who recommended him.³⁰

On September 17, 1969 Krogh asked DeLoach whether Straight had been an FBI employee, so that the White House could consider him for the deputy chairmanship of the National Council on the Arts. DeLoach told Krogh that Straight had never been employed by the Bureau. His memorandum records that Krogh said he "planned to recommend to Ehrlichman that this man not be hired." On October 15, 1969 Leonard Garment, special consultant to the president, told DeLoach that the White House was still weighing the appointment; that Straight had told the White House he had "cooperated fully with the FBI" since 1963; that Peter M. Flanagan had discussed the appointment with Senators Karl Mundt and Gordon Allott, and that Mundt had reservations; and asked whether the Bureau would talk to Mundt. DeLoach replied that the Bureau would furnish nothing without White House instructions. DeLoach told Garment that the Bureau had contacted Straight a number of times since 1963 to fill out his admissions, and that Straight had contacted the Bureau once in 1969 to say he planned a short trip to the Soviet Union and was concerned that the KGB might approach him.³¹ A newspaper clipping in the Bureau's file of November 1969 states that Straight "will play a major role in the Arts Council under Miss Hanks' direction" and "is being spoken of as a possible deputy."³⁹ The Endowment's staff list of January 1970 names Straight as deputy chairman.³⁸

The New York Times reported that he served "in the Nixon and Ford administrations" as deputy chairman, from 1969 to 1977; a listing of his book Twigs for an Eagle's Nest: Government and the Arts, 1965-1978 gives 1969 to 1978. His 1982 oral history lists his role as deputy chairman and as acting chairman of the Endowment in 1977.¹⁵⁴⁰ The Washington Post identified him as a former deputy chairman in 1981.⁸

William C. Whitney Foundation

The FBI's 1969 summary describes Straight as president of the William C. Whitney Foundation, a charitable organization that "concerns itself with the arts, having made many grants in the fields of music, dance, theater, and painting."³⁰ Milton C. Rose, senior partner of Mudge, Rose, Guthrie and Alexander, told the Bureau that the foundation was a client of the firm, was "created by Mr. Straight's parents in memory of his grandfather" William C. Whitney, and that Straight had been its president "since its inception in 1937."⁴¹ Herbert Faber, an associate of the firm, said Straight was a client and that the firm handled the foundation's legal transactions. Harriett K. Evison told the Bureau she had been Dorothy's social secretary and later assistant secretary-treasurer of the foundation. Dr. Shelton Siegel, a vice president of the Population Council, said he had contacted Straight about possible grants to the council and that Straight had been cooperative.⁴¹

The 1969 summary also records a December 6, 1952 article in the Washington Times-Herald reporting that Straight was questioned before a special House committee investigating tax-exempt foundations about $19,000 in grants by the foundation to organizations "cited as subversive or communist fronts." The clipping states that Straight contended that none of the organizations was known to be a Communist front when the grants were made and that they were cut off when so listed.⁴² In 1955 "Michael Straight, Publisher, The 'New Republic,'" signed a petition to the President on amnesty for Smith Act defendants, and he was national chairman of the American Veterans Committee from 1952 to 1954.³⁰

Family and Associates

An FBI investigation of an unidentified Soviet subject known as "Dan," conducted in 1968, examined Straight. The Bureau's memoranda record that his military record tended to eliminate him as a suspect, and they asked for information on his brother, Whitney Straight. They also considered Louis Dolivet, who had been married to Straight's sister Beatrice,⁴³ and noted that Dolivet had tried to interest Nelson Rockefeller and John Hay Whitney in a United Nations journal. The memoranda concluded that Dolivet could not be considered a good suspect.⁴⁴ The 1969 summary gives the marriage of Beatrice and Dolivet as February 21, 1941; the 1968 memoranda give February 21, 1942. The 1969 summary records that the couple were reportedly separated as of September 1950, and that in about 1966 Beatrice Straight married the actor Peter Cookson.⁴⁵ A 1969 supplementary memorandum records that Dolivet reportedly resided in Paris, France, and travelled to the United States once or twice a year on business.⁴⁶ It records that informants "who have furnished reliable information in the past" said Dolivet was in early 1930 an active international Communist agent in Europe and a close associate of Willi Münzenberg, that his employers recommended him as pro-American and anti-Soviet, and that other informants thought him "an inactive, but highly placed, Soviet Agent." The Bureau reported in September 1969 that Straight had not associated with Dolivet in over twenty years.³⁰⁴⁷ The Vassiliev concordance lists Dolivet as Straight's brother-in-law with references in White Notebooks #2 and #3.¹⁴ The National Archives' MI5 file KV 2/4366 (December 18, 1937 to March 22, 1951) is on Dolivet and is catalogued as describing a secret Communist who moved to the United States in 1941.⁴⁸

An FBI index entry records that Whitney Straight was chief executive of the British Overseas Airways Corporation in 1948 and joined the board of Rolls-Royce in 1955; Straight told the FBI in 1963 that his brother was executive vice president of Rolls-Royce and that during a visit to Moscow about February 1963 he talked with Burgess, who sent Michael his regards.²⁷²⁹ The 1969 inquiry recorded that his son David had applied to the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency and that his son Michael Willard Straight was a naval officer.⁴⁹ It also records that his daughter Susan was one of three persons observed on September 19, 1967 placing handbills on cars in the Pentagon parking lot that read "Exorcise the Pentagon, 10/21-22."³⁰

Free World

Michael Straight is named on the editorial board of Free World (magazine), edited by his brother-in-law Dolivet, in the first issue of October 1941 and in the December 1941 issue.⁵⁰ At the Free World congress reported in December 1942 he chaired the Commission on Federalism.⁵¹ The statement of ownership for Free World, Inc. for October 1, 1946 lists him among the directors with Dolivet, Li Yu-Ying, Hugh Moore, Frederick McKee, William Emerson and Wou Saofong, and on the editorial board with Max Ascoli and others.⁵²

After Long Silence

Straight published his account as After Long Silence in 1983, serialised in the Observer.³⁴ The New York Times summarized the book as a confession in which Straight said he was reluctant to spy when Blunt ordered him to in 1937. It reported that critics on the right accused him of confessing to the FBI "only to clear his career path" and speculated whether blowing the whistle sooner might not have saved lives, and that "gentler reviewers" accused him of "sentimentality and narcissism."¹ In the January 1983 radio interview, asked who was criticizing him when Blunt had thanked him, Straight answered that he was being "hit very hard" for one line in the book saying that he remained a liberal, and said: "I've had a lot of criticism for writing the story."¹⁰ In a 1995 letter to the London Review of Books he wrote: "I was not a spy in the accepted usage of that word."¹

His papers are at Cornell University (collection #4465, 21 cubic feet, 1890 to 1992), including FBI files requested under the Freedom of Information Act, files on the National Endowment for the Arts and Nancy Hanks, clippings and letters relating to Blunt, and notes on The Haunted Wood.⁵³

Contested Accounts

Roland Perry's biography, The Last of the Cold War Spies: The Life of Michael Straight (2005), argues that Straight's involvement in Soviet espionage continued after the break he dated to 1942. A PopMatters review summarized Perry's case as follows. Perry argued that Straight's 1963 confession was false. Perry also argued that Straight's later civil liberties work and his involvement with Amnesty International served Soviet interests. Perry further held that Straight worked near the agent handling Walter Krivitsky, who was found dead in 1941, and left his government post three days after the death to edit the New Republic. The review recorded that Perry lacked hard evidence, and that the surviving documents generally supported Straight's account.⁵⁴ The sources give State Department end dates of February 28, 1941 and May 21, 1941; the Vassiliev notes record Straight's resignation as reported to a KGB contact on July 15, 1941.³¹³²¹

On the Hiss question, Allen Weinstein's book Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case asserted that Straight tried to recruit Alger Hiss. Straight wrote to The New York Review of Books in December 1997 that in the June 1938 dispatch published by Weinstein, Akhmerov noted only that Straight "mentioned" Hiss as "a very progressive man," and that Weinstein had asserted that he "tried to recruit" Hiss. Weinstein replied that the book's line should read that Straight, code-named "Nigel," "identified and described Hiss to Itzhak Akhmerov," and that it would read that way in any future edition.¹⁵ In the 1983 radio interview Straight said he had one or two encounters with Hiss, and that on the day Chambers named Hiss he telephoned Hiss, who answered quietly and deliberately that it was an effort to undermine the Carnegie Endowment for World Peace, of which he was president; Straight said he reasoned from the calm that "he's been preparing himself for this day for quite a while."¹⁰ The CIA's selected Venona messages, published as Venona Part II, do not name Straight or "Nigel"; the Wilson Center concordance lists "Nigel" as a cover name in the Vassiliev notebooks only.¹⁴⁵⁵

Death

Straight died at home in Chicago on January 4, 2004, aged 87, of pancreatic cancer, according to his lawyer, Arthur Mahon.¹ He had married Belinda Crompton on September 10, 1939. A court in Washoe County granted her a divorce from him in Reno, Nevada on August 27, 1969, on grounds of incompatibility.⁵⁶