enlisted into the Cambridge Five Soviet spy ring led by Guy Burgess, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt, which successfully penetrated Britain's MI-6 on behalf of the Kremlin during the early Cold War. He was recruited by Blunt, who according to The Telegraph, was also briefly his lover. In 1937, Straight moved to Washington, D.C. where he worked as an economist for the Department of State. He continued to pursue both politics and his stratospheric social life, sharing a house with Joseph Alsop, drafting speeches for and dining with the Roosevelts, and writing his analytic memorandums, some of which he passed on to Soviet intelligence." After serving in the State Department and the Department of the Interior between 1937 and 1942, Straight became The New Republic'''s Washington correspondent in 1940, and editor in 1941. After serving in the US Air Force from 1942 to 1945, he returned to The New Republic as its publisher, and hired Henry A. Wallace, the former 33rd Vice President of the United States from 1941 to 1945 and the Secretary of Commerce from 1945 to 1946, as the magazine's editor. Straight resumed the editorship when Wallace departed in 1947 to launch his 1948 Progressive Party presidential campaign, Straight left the helm of The New Republic in 1956. In his 1993 memoir, After Long Silence, Straight confessed his involvement in the Cambridge spy ring, seeking to both explain and exonerate himself by contending that he was recruited reluctantly, and never passed classified information to his Soviet contact, "Michael Green." He also claimed to have broken with the Party in 1941. Privately, Straight first confessed in 1963 to family friend and fellow cold war liberal Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who was then serving as a special assistant to John F. Kennedy. Having been invited to work in the White House and concerned about undergoing a background check, Straight confided to Schlesinger who sent him to the Department of Justice, which helped trigger an investigation that resulted in Anthony Blunt's exposure. With Straight's previous activities remaining undisclosed, he maintained good standing in Washington, and served from 1969 to 1977 as the deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.see also: See also: Richard Norton-Taylor, "Michael Straight: Cambridge Spy Whose Testimony Was Crucial in Exposing Anthony Blunt," The Guardian, January 8, 2004. Deportation and after According to the 1950 HUAC report, "as a result of the investigation and