his own image. His defense attorney says, “But Your Honor, my client never killed a fly.” “Yes,” the prosecutor replies, “and the flies he didn’t kill brought pestilence to a province.” Leaving Philby and Maclean—with whom Straight had no contact—aside, had he opened the closet on Burgess, the trail to the others would have been clear. And who knows what damage Lee Long, deputy intelligence commander at the Allied Control Commission in Germany until 1951—and not blown until Straight talked in 1963—did to our intelligence work in that significant era? The tone of Straight’s book seems to presume absolution, but the best I can say—not being charged with the care of souls—is that in the Koestlerian sense “he never killed a fly.” □
The Years of Lyndon Johnson:
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