Last of the Cold War Spies (38 page)

In England, the Elmhirst family prepared for Straight’s annual return to Dartington. Only Whitney did not look on it as a joyous occasion. He had recently been informed, by connections at his part-time work for MI6, about his brother’s other life.

Diana Barnato-Walker, Whitney’s mistress of thirty-five years and mother of his only son, recalled his coming to her home and slumping in a chair. “I knew something was troubling him that evening [in early 1950],” she said, “when he asked me for a second Scotch.”

Diana asked him what was on his mind. He took a deep breath and told her that “Michael is a Russian spy.” It was a distressing time for Whitney, for the discovery could affect the whole family. He poured out as much as he knew to Diana and swore her to secrecy. Whitney had yet to investigate the ramifications of what he had learned.

The emotion of the time caused Diana to pen a poem dated Spring 1950 and titled: “Suspicions, Circs (and Spies?)”:

Straight, Rose and Green are all in one office,

A nastier threesome lean far to the left . . .

Are Powers that be completely bereft

To allow
New Republic
to tie up with Moscow?

(If I could get closer I’d shut up their orifice)

But, People, their people, who come from afar

Leaving squeaky doors open or always ajar

For jobs from the Kremlin to dear Uncle Sam.

Or “Marry my sister, she’s not what I am”

Now Rose does the finance, and Green fixes speeches,

Of something all tinged with a blood-letting red.

Straight is the cover & Rose does the paying,

And agents I know become horribly dead.

It’s more than suspicion, Why can’t it be seen

A colorsome trio are Straight, Rose and Green?
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She took poetic license with remarks about Rose, who was not a Soviet spy and had no idea of Straight’s secret connections. Yet she was correct on Green, who would have been Michael Greenberg, Straight’s fellow Cambridge KGB recruit, not his control, Michael Green. (Michael Greenberg complicated matters by later changing his name to Green.) Diana’s line, “Marry my sister, she’s not what I am,” was a reference to the fact that Straight introduced his sister Beatrice to Louis Dolivet (who Whitney knew was also a KGB agent). It demonstrated the extent of MI6’s knowledge of several threads in the KGB networks operating in the United Kingdom and the United States at that time.

Whitney did not wish to confront his brother just yet, if at all. He would not have been able to divulge the source of his information, and he did not wish to upset his mother. He decided to remain quiet and to learn what he could before taking action. Foremost in his mind was Straight’s handling of
The New Republic
and the Whitney Foundation in the United States.

His first act was to greet Straight and his son, David, now 7 years old, in London in mid-June as if nothing had happened. Straight was unaware of his brother’s feelings and his position with MI6. Whitney met him at the airport and drove them to the four-bedroom family apartment at 42 Upper Brook Street in London’s West End, near the American embassy. Dorothy and Straight’s 20-year-old half-brother William met them there. Whitney’s demeanor appeared normal. There was no hostility or a warning about what might be brewing.

In July, Straight and his son visited Dartington. William Elmhirst recalled the visit and remarked that “the family [except for Whitney] looked on him as heroic for his pursuit of liberal causes in the American sense. In the UK we backed the Labour Party, and were influenced by Michael Young.”

During Straight’s stay, Leonard was going through a desk drawer when he found Straight’s British Communist Party card. Straight made light of the discovery, especially after his sworn statement to the HUAC hearing.

“Can’t have just anyone finding that, can we?” Straight said, taking the card from his stepfather. “Better get rid of it.”
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Dorothy did not pressure her son over
The New Republic
, despite the fact that it continued to accumulate losses, putting the magazine in jeopardy of folding unless it could somehow be made more attractive to advertisers. She knew it had been a problem since inception. Dorothy was also aware that union demands, higher wages, and increased overheads had escalated costs in the postwar era. Coupled with massive blowout from the Wallace “campaign,” the magazine was left floundering. Yet she did not intervene. She had full confidence in Rose’s judgment and what she knew of her son’s endeavors, despite the drain on the finances of Trust 11.

By coincidence Gil Harrison, Straight’s friend at the AVC, visited Dartington Hall in the summer. He would later be interested in buying the magazine.

W
hile Straight was relaxing at Dartington, his contention that Southeast Asia would be a battleground for the capitalist-communist struggle was tested on June 25, 1950, when communist North Korean troops crossed the 38th Parallel—the boundary line established by the allies when the Japanese surrendered in 1945—and invaded South Korea. The United Nations—minus the Soviet Union, which had absented itself—put together an armed force of several nations dominated by the United States to defend South Korea and to “restore international peace and security in the area.”

The assembled UN force was under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, a man driven by his sense of destiny. He sent four American divisions to support the South Koreans, but they were forced south. They were reinforced with other divisions and fought back hard. On September 15, MacArthur led U.S. troops on a daring amphibious landing at Inchon, one hundred miles south of the 38th Parallel, which was far north of the main battlefront. This brilliant move cut off the North Korean forces’ lines. MacArthur’s forces north and south of the invading enemy then converged and shattered them.

The allied forces now advanced northward to the 38th Parallel. The Chinese warned them not to cross it; however, MacArthur was keen to
unify Korea. In late September, the U.S. embassy in New Delhi reported to Washington that the Indian ambassador to Beijing, Sardar Panikkar, advised that China would enter the Korean War if the UN forces crossed the 38th Parallel. This confirmed previous intelligence reports that China was committed by a secret treaty with Russia to protect the hydroelectric power system based on the giant Suiho Dam in North Korea. This power was sent as far north as Port Arthur and supplied the strategic, Soviet-run munitions industry in Manchuria. It turned out the latest heavy model Russian tank, among many other products. Other reports from Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Chinese intelligence service warned that two Chinese divisions, the 164th and 166th, were in Korea. Communist Chinese General Lin Piao’s Fourth Army was moving up the coast to the Korean-Manchurian border, the northeast part of China.

MacArthur scorned the Panikkar report as propaganda, saying that the Indian ambassador was a Beijing stooge. He cabled Truman, telling him that Chinese troops would not enter the war. He asked for authority to cross the 38th Parallel and put an early end to the conflict.

Their vital communications were being picked up in Washington by the KGB’s two top-line British agents, Kim Philby and Guy Burgess, who were working overtime sending information on the Korean conflict to Moscow. They used two channels, through their Washington control and through Blunt in London, who passed information to Yuri Modin. Burgess had obtained a posting from the foreign office to be first secretary at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. He arrived on August 4, 1950. The Russians had a daily monitoring of the conflict from him and Donald Maclean (now on the American desk at the British Foreign Office) in London since the June 25 invasion.

Burgess had built an expertise on events even before that. In April, he had sent Modin a long, hand-written account taken from a report by British intelligence detailing the extent of Soviet aid to the Chinese and Korean forces. This way the Russians knew exactly what the West knew about Russian cooperation with the Chinese and Koreans. This intelligence gave Moscow an idea of how much or how little the United States was prepared for a surprise attack by Moscow’s “proxy,” the North Koreans.
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Burgess’s KGB assignment was to assist Philby in gathering espionage material on every level—diplomatic and military—of the conflict.

Now the Russians wanted to know just how far the United States was prepared to go “down the road to world-war.”
²
Every detail on the intentions of MacArthur and Truman would be valuable, as well as any intelligence on the advance of the UN troops.

The plan to cross the 38th Parallel and “lock up” the whole Korean peninsula was worked out by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and passed on for acceptance to its allies. Philby and Burgess at the British embassy were privy to the details, which were dispatched to their controls. By October 15, when MacArthur met Truman at Wake Island, the stated plan was to send only South Korean soldiers north of the 38th Parallel. The Chinese said that the presence of UN troops north of the line would cause them to intervene. However, MacArthur had no intention of parking victorious U.S. troops on the boundary line and sending the less proficient South Korean divisions north into battles and probable defeat. Stalin’s intelligence sources informed him of this. It was no surprise to the Russians when MacArthur sent all the troops under his command pushing into North Korea.

By mid-November, the allied forces were nearing the North Korean/ Manchurian border marked by the Yalu River. Truman ordered Mac-Arthur not to cross the Chinese border and not to contemplate the use of atomic weapons.

Stalin had been pressuring Mao Tse-tung to intervene, but Mao was reluctant. He didn’t want the war to spread to China, especially as he was unaware of U.S. intentions. Would MacArthur use the bomb? It was a very real possibility in the minds of Mao and his high command. They, like all world leaders, had been stunned, although not unhappy, by how Truman had ended the Japanese war with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mao saw MacArthur as a leader with dangerous ambitions. After the Japanese precedents had been set, there was always the potential now that atomic weapons would be used again. There was enough pressure from the hawks in the Pentagon and the far-right wing in the United States for Truman to feel compelled to make it perfectly clear to his general that he must not use nuclear weapons.

As Straight was composing
New Republic
stories while on tour in Asia, China’s leader was waiting for the intelligence on the firm intentions and orders from Truman to MacArthur. Stalin was receiving almost daily assessments from fellow members of the Cambridge ring, Philby, Burgess, and Donald Maclean (via Modin and other controls). Vital intelligence received at the Kremlin was passed on to the nervous Chinese leader.

The Russian dictator had put the highest authority on the ring’s judgment. He had psychological appraisals of Truman and MacArthur, which showed that the general, despite his bellicosity and desire to go down in history as a decisive winner of major battles, would not disobey firm imperatives. The assessment of Truman was that he was a tough leader who would take action if crossed by an army commander. Coupled with this analysis was the categorical conclusion from Stalin’s three agents that the bomb would not be dropped. There would be no invasion of China. This was reconfirmed by Maclean, who accompanied Clement Atlee to the United States. The British prime minister wanted to know Truman’s real intentions, and the president told him, in private, that under no circumstances would the bomb be used.
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Stalin now had his three best espionage sources and Modin telling him without qualification that whatever MacArthur’s ambitions, he would be restricted at the Manchurian border. In sixteen years of espionage through three major wars—in Spain, World War II, and now Korea— and through countless other incidents, Stalin had never had other than first-rate intelligence from the Cambridge ring. He informed Mao with full confidence that he could attack U.S. troops and invade North Korea without the threat of the bomb.

At this critical moment, Straight was close to the action. He filed stories from India and then moved on to Hong Kong. From there, on about November 20 (for the November 27 edition of
The New Republic
), he wrote an article titled, “Will Communism Win in Asia?”

“Thirty miles inland,” he wrote, “Communist soldiers guard the frontier [to China] with loaded rifles. The traveler, staring across the bare mountains, must remember that Hong Kong is not China, and that it offers no clues to China . . . refugees flood back and forth across the
frontier, journalists pass in and out, seamen bring back stories . . . traders keep open lines of communication. From these people the traveler can gather the scattered pieces of a missing picture. . . .”

According to KGB sources, at this time Mao was not quite convinced about Stalin’s intelligence resources. He needed to hear the information, not via the Russians, but straight from the mouth of one of Stalin’s Western agents. Was Straight the man? Was he one of those journalists who passed “in and out”? Once more, he was close to the action and could easily have slipped across the border for a meeting with the Chinese party chairman.

Straight or someone else at this time did convince Mao to act. Unlike Stalin, he was yet to think of tens of millions of lives as expendable in the name of communism. But because of information he had received face to face, Mao was now prepared to take a big risk. The Chinese amassed 400,000 troops on the other side of the Yalu, and waited in ambush.
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