Last of the Cold War Spies (31 page)

Straight saved the situation for the moment by insisting that Wallace go ahead with a planned tour of Europe to build his image as a statesman. Straight set up and funded the trip after engineering a “request” for Wallace to visit England by his contacts, including editor Kingsley Martin, at the left-wing
New Statesman
magazine.

It was a critical time. Truman was pressuring the senate to ratify his plans to fight communism abroad and contain Russia, but many of its members needed persuading. In England the Labour Party was in power and divided over the Truman Doctrine. Its vocal communist faction was creating a fuss over the issue. Several members of the British cabinet were against it and siding with Wallace’s stance. Following the Stalinist line, Straight was ambitious to drive a wedge between the United Kingdom and the United States, and Wallace presented what appeared to be a very good opportunity for doing it. Straight was not fearful of communist support in the United Kingdom, where liberal views often were indistinguishable from hard-left positions. He arranged for more than fifty communist and other left-wing members of parliament to sign a telegram welcoming Wallace. Yet Straight could not cajole Ernest Bevin, Britain’s foreign secretary, into signing his name. Labour, despite its left-wing tilt, could not break with Truman, especially with the Conservative opposition, led by Churchill, unanimously in favor of the president’s policy. There was a fear in the United Kingdom as much as the United States of Stalin’s expansionist aims.

Straight arrived in England on April 7, 1947, and was driven to Dartington, where the family, unaware of the amount of money being lost on
The New Republic
, welcomed him warmly.
¹⁰
He had portrayed his support
for Wallace to his parents as a gallant fight for peace. And from what they could see on the surface, this was well worth supporting. Dorothy didn’t like Truman or any of his policies and was a strong Wallace supporter. She agreed with Straight’s earnest positions on the United States staying out of foreign lands. Dorothy deplored the concept of the loyalty program and was fearful of how the FBI would use it. The heat of these issues had ensured her support for Straight’s actions with
The New Republic
, although a proper assessment of the expenditure then may have caused her concern.

The British papers were editorializing on the Truman Doctrine, and Wallace decided he would say something precipitate on the issue when he arrived in England the next day, April 8. It was a contentious approach.
¹¹
It was one thing for an ex–vice-president and potential presidential candidate to make remarks at home, but it was another to make them on foreign soil, especially if they related to sensitive policy issues. It would focus further attention on the candidate, which was what a tour like this was all about.

Wallace went from the airport to the Savoy Hotel where Straight had organized a press conference for fifty reporters. The politician had little choice but to respond to demands to know where he stood on the Truman Doctrine. Yet this was what he wanted.

“The administration has embarked on a course of ruthless imperialism,” Wallace began in a tirade against U.S. policy abroad. The reporters scribbled, and he expounded on his thoughts.
¹²
Straight was pleased to have the spotlight on his candidate. However, he had not quite anticipated the reaction in Washington, where the politician’s words caused a furor. Wallace was denounced on the floors of the senate and the house. Republicans and Democrats lined up to berate him. Many who were ambivalent about the Truman Doctrine now wrapped themselves in the American flag. Wallace and Straight had blundered in not accounting for the fervent nationalism still strong among ex-servicemen who had just stopped fighting a major war. The responses had united them behind their president once more. This was reflected in remarks in congress and in the press.

Straight was startled by the intensity of U.S. reaction, which was followed by a critical response in the United Kingdom.
¹³
“When U.S. Senators, Congressmen and the press began to storm against Wallace,” the
Chicago Sun
’s Frederick Kuh reported, “this was the signal for British conservative papers to start criticizing him too.”

Churchill thought he could see a sinister underlying influence in Wallace’s pronouncements. Speaking to a Conservative Party rally in the Albert Hall, he called Wallace a “crypto-Communist,” which, given his record and sympathies, was not far off the mark. Churchill then went on to link Wallace with his long-term enemy and short-term military ally, Stalin. Wallace, he said, was trying to “separate Great Britain from the United States and to weave her into a vast system of Communist intrigue.”
¹⁴

The undeclared candidate seemed to thrive on the abuse. He went on BBC radio, reaching about a quarter of the British population, and spoke of his vision for raising the living standards of all peoples. But the press was not interested in his doctrine for a world utopia. It wanted more on the Truman Doctrine. Wallace gratified them by becoming even more outspoken and pointed in a speech at the Central Hall, Westminster, on April 11. He attacked U.S. withdrawal of financial support for a UN body (UNRRA) giving relief and aid “efficiently in the Ukraine, White Russia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia.” He saw the Truman Doctrine as a campaign of attrition against the Soviet Union and a policy of “unconditional aid to anti-Soviet governments.”
¹⁵

Again, Stalin’s speechwriters could not have done better than these lines. Reaction at home built. Representative John Rankin, chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, urged that the Logan Act of 1799 be invoked to prosecute the former vice-president for “dealing with foreign nations to defeat American measures.” Rankin was supported by many congressmen. Representative Herbert A. Meyer of Kansas paraphrased Churchill and called Wallace a “red stooge” and a “type of quisling.”
¹⁶
Next, the Veterans of Foreign Wars urged that Wallace’s passport be revoked. The ADA opposed his views but supported his right to state them.

Wallace, who seemed to lack humor, may not have seen the irony in his expounding the rights of the common man while he stayed in luxury at the Savoy. Meanwhile Straight, also enjoying the top hotel’s trappings, was beginning to wonder about the axiom “any publicity is good publicity.” His candidate was in the headlines, but would it hinder or help his chances of a Democratic nomination in a little more than a year?

Wallace attracted an assortment of guests, both invited and spontaneous, to the Savoy. Straight acted as his strategist and minder, screening those who wished to see him. One uninvited visitor was a counselor from the Soviet embassy, whom Straight thought was part of a practical joke. Straight hurried him to the elevator before reporters, who were sitting and drinking in their suite, saw him.
¹⁷
Straight had no reason to raise the temperature on the “Wallace-as-Soviet-puppet” issue, now simmering on both sides of the Atlantic, by parading a Soviet official before the press with the candidate.

Guy Burgess was another unwelcome guest at the suite. Straight rushed him down to the Savoy bar and bought him a double whisky.
¹⁸
Yet there was no need to fear Burgess being spotted by journalists. He would have been known to many of them and was not then unmasked as a KGB agent. In fact he had a respectable cover working for Hector McNeil, Britain’s foreign secretary.

Straight told his FBI interrogators that he had “bumped into” Burgess in the Houses of Parliament—a common coincidence in London and Washington according to the FBI files and his memoirs.
¹⁹
This led to lunch at the Savoy. They had much to discuss. It had been six years since they had been face to face. Burgess would have been fascinated by Straight’s grip on Wallace and his chances of gaining the Democratic Party nomination, and ultimately, the presidency. It would have been pleasing to Burgess to see how Straight had developed as a political force in the United States, given his investment in him and his influence over Straight’s return to his home country to work for the cause. Especially satisfying would have been Straight’s commitment of considerable resources to Wallace’s campaign.

According to his interviews with the FBI, Straight claimed that he informed Burgess of the Truman administration’s feeling of “complete frustration with the Soviets,” who he believed were inviting a “terrible clash.” Burgess asked if he (Burgess) could impart this and other information told him to his “friends.” Straight agreed he could. According to Straight, he took this to mean that Burgess would be passing on information from him to his “Soviet principals.”
²⁰
At the time, Burgess’s control was Ivan Milovzorov, but he was about to be replaced by Yuri Modin as the master spy for the Cambridge ring, which he was being sent to London to reactivate as Cold War tensions mounted.

Straight also claimed he mentioned a meeting he had with Harry Pollitt and that Burgess had warned him that British intelligence would know everything discussed. Pollitt had a mistress whom he told everything. She reported weekly to Scotland Yard.
²¹

The validity of Straight’s comments is doubtful as he, twenty years after the event, would have been trying to justify his actions to his FBI interrogators. In 1947, he was still acting as a fully fledged KGB man meeting agents such as Burgess, Cot, and Pollitt, who he was fully aware were espionage operatives like him.

After London, Wallace toured major cities in England, drawing crowds and headlines and causing the division which matched Stalin’s aims in the United Kingdom. He appeared the moderate voice of reason imploring the British not to be tied to U.S. foreign policy, primarily concerning its hostility to the Soviet Union. “Communism is an idea for ending poverty and exploitation,” Wallace told his audiences. “It cannot be destroyed by tanks and guns. It can only be made superfluous by a better idea; it can only be ended when poverty and exploitation are no longer a part of democracy . . . communism can never satisfy all the needs of mankind; democracy can, if we give it our full devotion.”
²²

In Manchester, as the British tour neared its end after eight days, Wallace gave a broad hint of his future candidacy when he said: “Twenty-five million former Roosevelt voters still exist, and although many may have fallen away from the Democratic Party, they have not yet joined the Republicans. These people are waiting for leadership today.”
²³

The little party flew on to Sweden and Denmark where they were greeted by more communist supporters. With the pressures in the United Kingdom behind him, Straight enjoyed himself and got drunk at a reception. The next stop, on April 21, was Paris, where KGB agent Pierre Cot and two other U.S. Soviet spies, Alfred and Martha Stern (who later fled to Czechoslovakia after being indicted by a grand jury for espionage), had been enlisted to organize the visit.
²⁴
A big crowd of communists turned up at the airport, led by two leaders of the French Communist Party. Straight claimed he looked in vain for a sprinkling of political moderates, but Cot had failed to deliver.

Wallace addressed the Sorbonne, and his speech there was judged by left-wing observers as moderate. The party returned to the United States amid controversy but satisfied that Wallace had stamped his claim to being a world statesman. More important, the tour had lifted Wallace’s profile, for better or for worse.

Straight returned to New York in late April 1947, spent two days at Old Westbury with his family, and then joined Wallace and his PCA supporters on a grand tour of the United States. He had misgivings. After more than six months of effort, he had failed to bring in advertisers to
The New
Republic
. The losses were big. Straight had bound the magazine to Wallace, and now he was drifting toward the communist-controlled PCA. Straight wondered if the progressives’ narrow policies would hem the candidate in and possibly restrict his electability as the Democratic Party’s nominee. He could only wait and see. Straight had to stay close to the candidate in order to keep some control and influence.