SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100860003-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 9, 2010
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: January 24, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/09: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100860003-5
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Straight;
Spilling the Personal
Story Behind Britain's
Great Spy Scandal
By Curt Suplee
Michael Straight sinks deepgt
down in his armchair and stares
balefully into the fire.
He's been over it all so many
times before, four decades of tt}is
canker at the soul's root. As a corp,
munist dupe, he had betrayed flre#.
his country and thop. hig : fries
Was he a spy or merely spine
But always his suffering - bad "bed'
private-until two years ago, wh i
.suddenly there it was: the while
squalid chronicle crackling across tb?
front pages, s:
-So "I wrote the book to sip
myself; to purge "myeelf," :Slim
says, each weary phrase dying toe
sib. And to rebut the press aooow
that'represented'me as a
spy
-Rue" which, was note-I
'Swig
;grandchild to ten -my-. own
although tit's not4a story.
poud of.-
.;,4t66, theaauthoc lformerediEoe f
The. New Republic and. fomnec deer:
uty chairman,of the National En
dowment for the Arts, has ,groped
again through the murk of memory
to produce "After Long Silence," his
"political memoir" just published,by
Norton-one of the most. extrava:
gantly unflattering autobiographies
in modern memory. "I knew I had a
debt to pay" to the British and
American people. he says, and is
WASHTNGTCN POST
24 TANUA-P Y 1983
They have been heaping since
March of 1981, when the London
Daily Mail broke the story of his role
in the spy scandal of the century:
that it was Straight's belated confes-
sion in 1963 which led to the even.
tual unmasking of British art histo-
rian Anthony Blunt, then the
queen's personal curator, as a Soviet
agent.
Despite longstanding suspicions,
there never had been hard evidence
to tie Blunt to the treasons of Guy
Burgess, Donald Maclean and Kim
Philby-until Straight revealed that
Blunt had recruited him to the corn-
munist underground in 1,93T when,
Moth were at Cambridge. LAnd more:
acting under Blunt's directions,
.Straight had returned to America in
937 and over the next four years,
Chile, working in the State and late-
nor.. departments, ' he met with and
nt named "Michael Green." Worse
[fine-FBI e copies of his work to a Soviet
he" concealed. his knowledge of
rtt and' Burgess' activities until a
check for?.the Endowment
'ost drove Thin tq disclosure: Straight
r he has encountered `absolutely
sociah ...6re aftert'1niitiM pit=
posure in 1981, but the publication-of
his book has exposed 1 Villiai
af:e has agreed 11red gff*a salvo ~f
anntempt, but slapped shat of calling
Straight a traitor, if-oWbecause tin
purpose or . passio :guided `his ? double
fe." There will be more.
n The center ` of judgment
against me so far is that,, l failed to do
anything with the information: I~bad
44 some 25 years," says . Straight,
.feeding the-fireplace with newsprint
~,1 tween brooding.-pauses*And essen-
;.'Sally that's true. I'm bdtaooking forpcniee-or for uo eondemna
.lion. rm perfectly; happy:f people to;
Iff I was wrong-Or iNea . 'D
Weak.. It's his ezplanation for _whp
jion`df;we o f , s mast
4 ealthy a ndpprombint'fem`lies with
airpersonality strong 4bough to be-
e the first-Ameri scan elected pres-
ident of the Cambridge Union, that
formidable debating society and po-
litical incubator) would -fall under the
spell of the effete Blunt; agreeing-by
not disagreeing-to aid The Commu-
nist International. "I lacked the will."
lie says. "I lacked the sense of self."
STAT
It's hard to believe at trs-. at
this placid Bethesda squire in Shet
land and flannels with the soft. still-
boyish face barely chafed by time,
snug in his Tudor enclave where J.R.
the one-eyed dog guards the front
door and a behemoth cat named Ba-
nanas pads under the centuries-old
paintings, could lack a sense of self.
Yet as he talks, Straight habitually
defers to others for his ideas-punc-
tuating his languid exposition with
"historians-say" or- "no one now he-
lieves," reaching frequently for the
small notebook he has filled with
handwritten quotations-from Gide,
Keynes, Koestler-about . the move-
ment which. gave his life meaning.
"The man who knows who he is re-
mains an individual I was submerging
myself into a larger identity306'
didn't know who-I was. I had no roots,
fro separate identity. , I didn't want
one." He is 'slouching further. . now,
wilting diagonally, hanging his ,right
arm over the -chair until the h*
grazes the floor, .voice. sinking to a
hospital waiting-room croak.
"I'd been transported from one
country to another, I'd never had a fa-
ther, my family was broken up-there
was no continuity in my fife of any
kind. I wasn't held in_ T think tradition is very unpor-
tant."
His mother was a Whitney heiress
and freethinker,..his father-an artist
and diplomat. Together they founded
The New Republic in 1914. (It would
later provide their, son with as oocu-.
pation whenever h~ heeded one: as 'a
writer from 1944=41, publisher- from
1946-48, and editor,.1R8-5&) iris fa-
thgr died in World War I (wb n Mi.
chael was `2~ and "bis'njother married
Leonard113m#ufst;,an ioonoclaetri; En-
glish 'educator Who.convinced &r.:#o
join-b-m litentling a , utopragppad-
yb-mgl'eymoved there in
.1926 and, tar-W"'`Darlington :Hall,
where students grew their own veg-
etables, built livestock sheds, played
bicycle polo and used Unisex showers.
By the time he was .12, Straight
writes, he and his brother and sister
"could not spell" but, "We were all too
familiar with Freud's interpretation of
dreams."
VT-IMIFINVED
ready to Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/09: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100860003-5