Michael Straight

{{short description|American writer, publisher and Soviet spy (1916–2004)}}

{{Infobox person

|birth_name = Michael Whitney Straight

| birth_date = {{birth date|1916|9|1}}

| birth_place = New York City, U.S.

| death_date = {{death date and age|2004|1|4|1916|9|1}}

| death_place = Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

| spouse = {{plainlist|

{{marriage|Belinda Crompton|1939|1969|end=div}}
{{marriage|Nina Auchincloss Steers|1974|1998|end=div}}
{{marriage|Katharine Gould
|1998}}

}}

| parents = Willard D. Straight
Dorothy Payne Whitney

| children = 5, including Dorothy

| relatives = Whitney Straight (brother)
Beatrice Straight (sister)

| education = London School of Economics
Trinity College, Cambridge

}}

Michael Whitney Straight (September 1, 1916 – January 4, 2004) was an American magazine publisher, novelist, patron of the arts, a member of the prominent Whitney family, and a confessed spy for the KGB.{{cite web |last=Anderson |first=Patrick |title=Thinker, Traitor, Editor, Spy |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/07/AR2005080700970.html |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=August 8, 2005 |access-date=May 7, 2015}}

Early life

Straight was born in New York City, the son of Willard Dickerman Straight (1880–1918), an investment banker who died in Michael's infancy, and Dorothy Payne Whitney (1887–1968), a philanthropist. Straight was educated at Lincoln School in New York City and, after his mother's remarriage to Leonard Knight Elmhirst (1893–1974), in England at his family's Dartington Hall, followed by studies at the London School of Economics. His siblings were racing driver Whitney Straight and Academy Award–winning actress Beatrice Straight.

Straight's maternal grandparents were Flora Payne and William Collins Whitney (1841–1904), the United States Secretary of the Navy during the first Cleveland administration. Flora was the daughter of Senator Henry B. Payne of Ohio{{cite book|last1=Newspaper Enterprise Association|title=The World Almanac & Book of Facts|date=1914|publisher=Newspaper Enterprise Association|page=662|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-GQ3AAAAMAAJ&q=William+Collins+Whitney+henry+b+payne&pg=PA662|access-date=15 July 2014}} and sister of Colonel Oliver Hazard Payne.

Career

While a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the mid-1930s, Straight became a Communist Party member and a part of an intellectual secret society known as the Cambridge Apostles. Straight worked for the Soviet Union as part of a spy ring whose members included Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and KGB recruiter Anthony Blunt.{{cite news |title=Michael Straight |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1451875/Michael-Straight.html |quote=Michael Straight, who has died aged 87, was the former Soviet spy responsible for telling MI5 that Anthony Blunt—whose lover he had briefly been at Cambridge in the 1930s—was a mole. ... |work=The Daily Telegraph |date=January 7, 2004 |access-date=2010-03-22 }} A document from Soviet archives of a report that Blunt made in 1943 to the KGB states, "As you already know the actual recruits whom I took were Michael Straight".{{Cite book|last=Haynes|first=John Earl|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/48138420|title=Venona : Decoding Soviet Espionage in America|date=1999|others=Harvey Klehr|isbn=0-585-37892-4|location=New Haven [Connecticut]|pages=152–155|oclc=48138420}}

Straight finished third in the 1934 South African Grand Prix, a race dominated by his brother Whitney.{{cite web|url=https://classiccarafrica.com/articles/the-first-south-african-grand-prix/|title=THE FIRST SOUTH AFRICAN GRAND PRIX|work=classiccarafrica.com|author=Ken Stewart|access-date=29 December 2020}}{{dead link|date=January 2025}}

After returning to the United States in 1937, Straight worked as a speechwriter for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was on the payroll of the Department of the Interior. Beginning in 1938, Straight carried on a covert relationship with Iskhak Akhmerov, the KGB spy. In 1940, Straight went to work in the Eastern Division of the United States Department of State.

In 1942, Straight joined the United States Army Air Forces, where he served as the pilot of a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, although he never saw combat. After the war, he took over as publisher of The New Republic, which was owned by his family. During his tenure, Straight hired former US vice president and future presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace to serve as the magazine's editor. Straight's writing for the magazine included a glowing review of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings when it was published.[https://newrepublic.com/article/136543/fantastic-world-professor-tolkien "The Fantastic World of Professor Tolkien"], Michael Straight, January 17, 1956, New republic In 1956, Straight left the magazine and began writing novels.

However, in 1963, in response to an offer of government employment in Washington, D.C., Straight faced a background check, and decided voluntarily to inform family friend and presidential special assistant Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. about his communist connections at Cambridge. This led directly to the exposure of Blunt as the recruiter of the Cambridge Five spy ring.{{CN|date=January 2025}}

Straight served as the deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1969 to 1977. In 1988, he published Nancy Hanks: An Intimate Portrait, which told the story of the second chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, with whom he had worked.

=Memoirs and novels=

Straight wrote several novels, including Carrington (1960), about the Fetterman massacre of 1866, and A Very Small Remnant"Except the LORD of Hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah." Isaiah 1:9. (1963), about the Sand Creek massacre of 1864, both Westerns that received respectful reviews, as well as Happy and Hopeless (1979), a love story set in the Kennedy Administration that he published himself. In 1983, Straight detailed his Communist activities in a memoir entitled After Long Silence.{{Cite book|last=Straight|first=Michael Whitney|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8827820|title=After long silence|date=1983|publisher=W.W. Norton|isbn=0-393-01729-X|edition=1st|location=New York|oclc=8827820}} His second memoir, On Green Spring Farm: The Life and Times of One Family in Fairfax County, Va., 1942 to 1966 was published posthumously by Devon Press.

Personal life

File:Newton D. Baker House - Washington, D.C.jpg, Straight's Georgetown home until 1976]]

In September 1939, he married Belinda Crompton (1920–2015) of Wilton, New Hampshire, who was a child psychiatrist. Together with Belinda, until their divorce in 1969, he had five children:{{cite news|last1=Lehmann-Haupt|first1=Christopher|title=Michael Straight, Who Wrote of Connection to Spy Ring, Is Dead at 87|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/05/nyregion/michael-straight-who-wrote-of-connection-to-spy-ring-is-dead-at-87.html?_r=0|access-date=3 February 2016|work=The New York Times|date=January 5, 2004}}

David Straight, who became a computer science professor at the University of Tennessee{{cite web|url=https://www.eecs.utk.edu/people/david-straight/ |title=David Straight|work=Min H. Kao Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science | Learn more about electrical engineering and computer science at UT |date=13 January 2020 }}
Michael Straight Jr.
Susan Straight
Diana Straight (Krosnick)
Dorothy Straight (b. 1958), who was the youngest published author.{{Cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/artsandliving/travel/daily/graphics/kidpage0121.pdf |title= Kids' Stuff: A Monthly Feature|access-date= 4 April 2010|newspaper=The Washington Post }}{{Cite web|url=http://www.theweeweb.co.uk/child_authors.php |title=Child Authors |access-date=4 April 2010 |publisher=The Wee Web |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100111032028/http://www.theweeweb.co.uk/child_authors.php |archive-date=11 January 2010 |url-status=dead }}

In 1965,{{cite web|title=National Register of Historic Places – Nomination Form |url=https://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NHLS/Text/76002126.pdf|website=nps.gov|publisher=National Park Service|access-date=14 March 2016}} Straight purchased the former Georgetown home of Jackie Kennedy, located at 3017 N Street, for $200,000 ({{Inflation|US|200000|1964|r=-3|fmt=eq}}). Kennedy bought the home when she moved out of the White House and Straight purchased it when Kennedy moved to New York City.{{cite news|last1=Cheshire|first1=Maxine|title=Spiro T's on the Ball|url=http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1972/10/22/page/161/article/spiro-ts-on-the-ball|access-date=14 March 2016|publisher=The Chicago Tribune|date=October 22, 1972}}

In 1974, Straight married his second wife, Nina G. Auchincloss Steers, the daughter of Nina Gore and Hugh D. Auchincloss. Steers was the half-sister of writer Gore Vidal and, coincidentally, a stepsister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Nina had previously been married to Newton Steers from 1957–1974 and with him she had three children: Hugh Auchincloss Steers (1963–1995), Ivan Steers, and Burr Steers (born 1965). The wedding was attended by Hugh D. Auchincloss, Janet Auchincloss, Jackie Kennedy, Renata Adler, Beatrice Straight and Peter Cookson.{{cite news|title=Mrs. Steers Wed to Michael Straight|url=http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1974/05/02/91440001.html?pageNumber=63|access-date=3 February 2016|work=The New York Times|date=May 2, 1974}} Straight lived in the Georgetown home from 1964 until 1976 when he sold it to Yolande Betbeze Fox, the former Miss America 1951.{{cite news|last1=Joynt|first1=Carol|title=Washington Social Diary|url=http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/across-the-nationacross-the-world/2013/washington-social-diary-27|access-date=14 March 2016|publisher=New York Social Diary|date=November 11, 2013}} Straight and his wife spent $125,000 ({{Inflation|US|125000|1974|r=-3|fmt=eq}}) renovating the home and decided to move to Bethesda, Maryland in 1976 when he was vice chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.{{cite news|last1=Staff|title=Mrs. Onassis, 'Gracious Full of Pep,' D.C. Socialite Says|url=https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/101037108/|access-date=14 March 2016|publisher=The Cincinnati Enquirer|date=December 7, 1975}}

They subsequently divorced and in 1998, he married Katharine Gould, a child psychiatrist and art historian. Straight died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Chicago, Illinois, on January 4, 2004, aged 87. He also had a home on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.

In popular culture

In season 3 of the popular television show, The Crown, actor Paul Hilton plays Straight in the first episode.{{cite news |last1=Watson |first1=Fay |title=The Crown: Who is Michael Straight? Was he really a sleeper agent? |url=https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/1206033/The-Crown-season-3-Netflix-Michael-Straight-sleeper-agent-Cambridge-Spy-Ring-Anthony-Blunt |access-date=29 April 2022 |work=The Express |date=18 November 2019 |language=en}}

References

External links

{{Citation |last=Vassiliev |first=Alexander |title=Alexander Vassiliev's Notes on Anatoly Gorsky's December 1948 Memo on Compromised American Sources and Networks |year=2003 |url=http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/alexander-vassilievs-notebooks-and-the-documentation-soviet-intelligence-operations-the-unit-0 |access-date=2012-04-21 }}

:The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) has the full text of former KGB agent Alexander Vassiliev's Notebooks containing new evidence on Straight's involvement in Soviet espionage.

Category:1916 births

Category:2004 deaths

Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge

Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics

Category:American magazine publishers (people)

Category:Communist Party of Great Britain members

Category:Deaths from pancreatic cancer in Illinois

Category:Writers from Chicago

Category:Writers from New York City

Category:Military personnel from New York City

Category:American people of English descent

Category:Grand Prix drivers