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

Perry, Roland

Softcover

ISBN 10: 030681482X ISBN 13: 9780306814822

Publisher: Da Capo Press Inc, 2006

Synopsis

The most damaging spy network of the Cold War - the infamous Cambridge Spy Ring - was comprised of several powerful and influential British citizens, and one American, Michael Straight. Born to a wealthy New England family, Straight attended Cambridge University in the 1930s, and there he fell in with the notorious circle of young men working for Soviet intelligence - Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and Kim Philby who was to become the most famous spy of the century. Over the following decades, Michael Straight led a secret life. While working at the State Department, he passed intelligence reports to a Russian agent. While running his family's magazine, "The New Republic", he funded several communist fronts. And while serving US presidents, including John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, he continued to meet with agents around the world. Despite Michael Straight's 1963 "confession" to the FBI that his covert activity ceased in 1941, investigative journalist and author Roland Perry has unearthed a different story. Incorporating material from exclusive interviews with Michael Straight, members of his family and former KGB agents (Perry has been careful to corroborate all KGB-supplied information), as well as archival research from the CIA, FBI and Soviet intelligence, Perry presents a full and complete portrait of Michael Straight, the last of the Cold War spies.

About this title

About the Author

Roland Perry is an author and award-winning journalist living in Australia. Among his sixteen books is The Fifth Man, a biography of Victor Rothschild, the British espionage agent, and Hidden Power: the Programming of the President, an investigation into the election and Presidency of Ronald Reagan

Edition details

• Publisher: Da Capo Press Inc
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 030681482X
• ISBN 13: 9780306814822
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416