Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (55 page)

At the end of May 1938, nonetheless, Akhmerov had to report to
Moscow that overall results had been meager. He met with Straight every
week but had received little. The promised armaments report had not
been completed, and Straight was no longer receiving current ambassadorial reports. Straight's attempt to get close to Charles Yost, assistant
chief of the Division of Arms and Munitions Control, came to nothing.
Still, when White House domestic adviser Thomas Corcoran asked
Straight to become his secretary, both Akhmerov and Moscow advised
him to remain at the State Department until and unless he could gain an
appointment to Roosevelt's personal staff. Similarly, Akhmerov dissuaded
him from accepting a post with New Deal administrator Harry Hopkins
(then working on domestic issues). Straight did hand over some routine
DOS reports during the remainder of the year and in early 1939, as well
as a few more significant items, including a lengthy analysis by an American diplomat in Great Britain on British reserves of munitions industry
raw materials and one top-secret report "on the premises and outcomes
of the Munich Conference," but Moscow Center was not upset or fazed.
Putting aside its earlier impatience, it considered the long-term prospects
and warned Akhmerov in late March 1939 not to allow Straight to take
any risks: "'Nigel [Straight] has the potential to be a major agent, and it
is not our intention to squander him on minor intelligence. It would be
better to receive one or two fewer outdated materials or to pass on a rough idea of their content than to subject our work and our countries'
relations to unwarranted risk."'96

The Nazi-Soviet Pact abruptly shook Straight's willingness to cooperate. He was critical of Soviet policy and the response of the CPUSA. In
a three-hour conversation, Akhmerov was unable to sway him and reported that Straight took the view that the "`non-aggression pact was tantamount to collaboration, that instead of fighting against Fascism and
Fascist aggression, the USSR had chosen to collaborate with Germany."'
Straight did not come to meetings for a month, but by late October
Akhmerov reported that he told him "`everything is now clear to him and
that my [Akhmerov's] analysis of the int'l situation had been correct."'
He once again began to contribute money to the CPUSA but produced
little or nothing for the KGB in the next month or so. When Akhmerov
prepared to leave the United States at the end of 1939, Moscow Center
concluded that "`to prevent him from being lost altogether,"' Straight
should not be deactivated but turned over to Konstantin Kukin, another
KGB operative. But with Moscow Center recalling most of its officers
from American stations, contact was soon lost. One report noted in regard
to Straight that the station "stopped receiving materials. At the end of
1940, there were no workers at all in Wash., and there was no one from
NY suitable for contact with N. ["Nigel"/Straight]." It wasn't until the
American stations were being rebuilt in 1941 that a KGB agent recontacted Michael Straight. When Zalmond Franklin met with him in July,
he learned that Straight had resigned from the State Department because he thought that the work was boring and had taken a job at the
family-owned New Republic.97

Ever hopeful, Moscow thought something could be salvaged. In late
November 1941 it sent a message to Vasily Zarubin urging attention to
Straight: "`He is a very valuable source who has vast connections in U.S.
industrial-financial and political circles. His relatives are owners of large
aircraft plants. He also has access to the White House, enjoys the favor
of Ickes, and is close to the State Department. The principal area of
"Nigel's" activities is to cultivate these connections, obtain information
about military orders and deliveries and about various kinds of deals, and
to obtain information from the White House and the State Department.
The most expedient use of him at present can proceed on the line of cultivating current connections who are relatives."' Moscow Center followed
with another ambitious directive to Zarubin in January 1942 variously
suggesting that the KGB New York station persuade Straight to join one
of the government war information agencies or the new Office of Strate gic Services, take control of the New Republic, or become politically active in the Democratic Party.98

Straight's former liaison, Iskhak Akhmerov, back in the United States,
had reestablished contact and was much less sanguine. In July he warned:

""Nigel's" [Straight's] behavior is progressively deteriorating. I wrote you in
detail about him in the last memorandum. He has begun quite often not to
show up for meetings, even though he is well aware of the difficulties that our
trips to Washington to meet with him involve. His behavior indicates that he is
trying to get rid of us. His letter and sarcasm toward the fraternal movement
[CPUSA] show that ideologically he has turned into a bourgeois apologist with
liberal-progressive phraseology. Nevertheless, we are trying to keep him as our
probationer [agent] in the hope of deriving some benefit from him. Working
with him has become much more difficult."

It didn't get any better. Akhmerov reported that after missing some meetings, Straight finally showed up:

"As usual, he apologized and made up a story that he had come at a different
time. Of course he's lying. I emphasized in a friendly manner that his failure to
come to meetings puts us in an unpleasant position, and I asked him to mend
his ways. This is not the first time. All this has to be put forth in a `nice' form.
Criticisms or pushiness will not lead to success. As I wrote you a few months
ago, we are attempting to straighten him out with the proper amount of attention, feelings of love and solicitude, and an educational influence. He has an
excellent understanding of all this. I hope we still have a chance to make him
into a person who is more useful to us."

Despite his reservations, Straight was occasionally useful or conciliatory.
In 1942 he pointed the KGB at a friend from his college days, William
Sherwood, being sent to London on a war-related assignment. Akhmerov
reported that Straight "`believes he can be very useful to us. `Nigel' says
he could send Sherwood to one or two of his old buddies in London who,
according to his information, are still involved with the fraternal movement [Communist Party]. These guys could educate Sherwood.- There
is no indication whether this lead was followed up.99

Straight was drafted into the Army in 1943, and the KGB deactivated
him, convinced, at long last, that he would no longer be even minimally
useful. In a summary report on his tenure in the United States, Zarubin
absolved Akhmerov of responsibility for the lack of results with Straight.
By the time he had been recontacted in 1941, his ideological convictions
had altered and he avoided meetings. He openly expressed disdain for the
CPUSA. Thinking that Earl Browder, chief of the CPUSA, might be able to straighten him out, the station had considered arranging a meeting,
but then Straight himself showed up in Browder's company and later
"`gave a devastating assessment of him [Browder] and his political principles"' to Akhmerov. Zarubin sadly confessed, "`We were never able to
turn `Nigel' [Straight] around."'roo

While Straight severed his connections with Soviet intelligence, he
retained enough loyalty to his old comrades in Great Britain that he was
unwilling to expose them or risk his own security. On a trip to England in
May 1946, he met Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt. While he admitted
that his views had changed, he reassured them that he would not betray
them. When Moscow considered how to rebuild its devastated American networks in 1948-50, it included Straight, by now publisher of the
New Republic, on the list of agents with whom the Washington station
was asked to renew ties, but nothing happened. A 1948 memo, likely
based on information from Martha Dodd Stern, disparaged Straight as "`a
prominent millionaire, who in the past was a member of the American
Young Communist League, then broke off his connection with it and is
now hostile toward Communists. "'101

Straight's political path after World War II was complex. When President Truman fired Henry Wallace as secretary of commerce for opposing
a tougher stance against the Soviet Union, Straight made Wallace editor
of the New Republic, from which position he advocated an accommodation with Joseph Stalin. Yet when Wallace became the Progressive Party
candidate for president in 1948, Straight, who replaced him as editor,
supported Truman and the Democrats and slowly moved toward antiCommunist liberalism. Nevertheless, when the issue of Soviet espionage
became a heated public issue in 1948 and 1949, Straight, who knew from
his personal experience that their stories were credible, published numerous articles harshly disparaging Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker
Chambers.102

Straight continued to hide his past until 1963, when President John F.
Kennedy nominated him to be chairman of the National Endowment for
the Arts. Concerned that a mandatory security check would expose him,
he went to the FBI and provided a partial account of his ties to Soviet intelligence. The FBI forwarded his statements about Anthony Blunt's role
in recruiting him for Soviet intelligence to the British Security Service,
enabling it to force a partial confession out of Blunt in 1964. Straight's
own role in Soviet espionage did not become public until publication of
his carefully parsed memoir in 1983.103

In addition to Duggan, the KGB also had a number of sources in the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, headed by Nelson Rockefeller. (President Roosevelt had created the Rockefeller Commission, as
it was often called, with a vague mandate and uncertain authority to coordinate the activities of government agencies in Central and South America.)

Three Soviet sources in the Rockefeller Commission came from the
Hemispheric News Service, a press agency that concentrated on Latin
American affairs. Robert Miller served as president, Jack Fahy as vicepresident, and Joseph Gregg as manager. All three were secret Communists and all three shared experience in the Spanish Civil War: Miller as
an employee of a Spanish Republican government information agency,
Fahy and Gregg as soldiers in the Comintern's International Brigades.
All three also became Soviet intelligence sources during World War II.

In the spring of 1940, the KGB New York station informed Moscow
that in response to its request to the CPUSA to recommend two secret
Communist journalists for its use, "'The head master [Browder] of the
local fellowcountrymen [Communist Party] recommended ... through
Sound [Gobs]: Robert Miller and George Seldes. The former has only
just applied for membership in the organization (meaning a secret enrollment).... They both run independent newspaper agencies (financially well-off and independent), which we could put to successful use.
We could carry on work with them through Sound.' 11104

Robert T. Miller, III, new recruit to the CPUSA, soon became a new
recruit to the KGB. Miller was born 5 April 1910 in Pittsburgh, where his
father was a prominent wealthy surgeon. He attended Princeton and received a master's in English in 1932. Through family connections he traveled to Russia in September 1934 for a company trying to develop U.S.-
Soviet trade. The business floundered, and in 1935 Miller began to file
reports for American and British newspapers, including Reuters and the
Baltimore Sun. While in Moscow, he met and married Jennifer Levy, a
New Yorker of Russian descent who had arrived there in 1932 and
worked for the Moscow Daily News. Miller and his wife left Russia in
1937. He was employed by the Spanish Republican government news
agency for a year before returning to the United States in 1939. That
summer he met Jack Fahy, and they agreed to set up Hemispheric News
Service, financed from Miller's family inheritance. It concentrated on
Latin American affairs, and Miller served as president, Fahy as vice-president, and Jennifer Levy Miller as secretary.ros

The firm moved to Washington in 1941, and Joseph Gregg joined as
its manager. Renamed the Export Information Bureau and devoted exclusively to research for the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs with
a yearly contract of $18,ooo, it was eventually absorbed by the CIAA, and
Miller, Fahy, and Gregg became staff officers. All three also became Soviet intelligence assets, although apparently (and in accordance with good
espionage tradecraft) unknown to each other.106

In the spring of 1941 Golos introduced Miller to his assistant, Elizabeth Bentley, and he began passing her material on Latin America, continuing to do so until 1944, including typewritten summaries of reports
from the Office of Naval Intelligence, Army G-z and the FBI that came
to the CIAA. Miller transferred to a State Department position handling
U.S.-USSR relations in June 1944 and later became assistant chief of the
Division of Research and Publication before resigning in December
1946. Bentley told the FBI that Miller became increasingly nervous over
his activities and stopped providing information after he entered the State
Department. Miller acknowledged to the FBI in 1947 that he had met
Bentley in New York and Washington, denied ever giving her government documents, but "did admit that he may have discussed confidential
matters with the informant generally and in a casual way." He told the
FBI agents that he could not remember ever meeting Golos and denied
being a member of the CPUSA, although he conceded he had been proSoviet ever since his sojourn in the USSR. His wording of his denial to the
FBI that he did not "remember" meeting Golos rather than a flat denial
possibly saved him from a perjury indictment inasmuch as FBI agents
had observed and documented their encounter in April 1941.10'

Anatoly Gorsky's 1948 memo on the exposure of Soviet assets in the
United States listed Miller as a source endangered by Bentley's defection. Miller was identified as "Mirage." "Mirage" appears in the Venona
decryptions as the cover name of an unidentified source turning over information on South American issues and details of German machinations
south of the border. Additionally, one cable reported that "Mirage's wife"
(Jennifer Levy Miller) had also provided information of assistance to the
KGB. A November 1941 Moscow Center message noted, "Sound [Gobs]
receives information from "Mirage" [Miller], who works on the Rockefeller Committee in processing all the material that comes in from South
America. Enclosure: "Sound's" three-page report." Miller is listed as
among Bentley's sources in a 1944 KGB report but designated as having
become "inactive" in a report Bentley gave to the KGB in January 1945, corroborating Bentley's FBI statement that he developed cold feet after
he transferred to the Department of State. 108