The Last of the Cold War Spies: The Life of Michael Straight--The Only American in Britain's Cambridge Spy Ring

When my grandparents were raising 6 kids on $25 a week (a good salary in the depression) Michael Straight was: 1. Receiving nearly $1,000 a week from his mother's trust fund. 2. Meeting with his soviet handler. 3. Dining with the Roosevelts. 4. Worming his way into sensitive posts thanks to his family's friendship with Franklin and Eleanor. 5. Telling his Soviet handler he had ten grand he didn't know what to do with (he gave it, and more, to communist party causes). 6. Hiding his career as a agent of Stalin from his mother so she wouldn't take him off the board of his trust fund (that would mean he wouldn't be unable to direct money in the fund to benefit communist front businesses). 7. Touring the country with ACLU founder Roger Baldwin to protect the "civil liberties" of workers (i.e. communist party members in the C.I.O. and other unions). 8. Ingrating himself further with the Democratic party by dumping thousands into a House race in Texas. 9. And on and on and on... The writing is good, but rather detailed. The facts check out with the Yale Annals of communism series, books by Ronald Radosh and others.

How treason and greed subverted American cold war efforts to limit and contain our enemies

The communist spy ring created in Cambridge (Philby, Maclean, Blunt, Burgess) were all British but one - Michael Straight. Straight was hansome, rich, and moved in the power circles in America. He visited Roosevelt and offered to become his personal secretary (what a job for a communist agent), but was turned down. Roosevelt instead got him a job in the State Department. Straight entered the Army during World War II and in his 'confession' in 1963 he said that he had stopped working for the Soviets when he joined the Army. In this book Mr. Perry presents pretty good evidence that this was not true and that Straight continued to work for the KGB until at least the late 1960's, and possibly until is death in 2004. This is a new book, exhaustively researched and contradicts Straight's own book 'After Long Silence,' especially on activities since World War II. The interested reader should read both books. Mr. Perry further speculates from time to time on activities of which there are no records. These are, however, clearly marked as speculation.