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Remembering Mr. X
Carlisle High School grad was a leading Cold War analyst.
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Article RatingThe mysterious Mr. X once loved to fish the Yellow Breeches creek.
Known back then as Donald Graves, the Carlisle High School senior would cast a line into the raceway flowing into Moore’s Mill, the family run business.
Life was much simplier for the future Cold War analyst and Dickinson College alumnist who died July 2 at his home in Washington D.C. He was 79.
Younger brother Gordon Graves recalled Tuesday the moment of triumph captured somewhere in a family album:
A photo of a proud Donald Graves holding up a prize trout with his thumb in its gills. The fish was so large it stretched from above the shoulder down below his belt.
The picture seems quite the contrast to the bespectacled serious looking man staring back from the Washington Post obituary. But for Gordon Graves of Boiling Springs, it was his brother just the same.
Donald Graves knew how to achieve results from most every fishing expedition. The Vermont native was widely regarded as one of the best American Kremlinologists of the Cold War.
Secret files
His position with the State Department was featured in a Washington Post Magazine cover story titled “The Secret Files of Mister X” published in 1982.
Graves was called “Mr. X” throughout the story and remained publicly unidentified until now. Gordon Graves said his brother died of an aggressive form of cancer of the salivary gland.
In an age before instant information retrieval and enhanced satellite surveillance, Graves pored over hundreds of newspapers published in the Soviet republics reading between the lines for clues.
The Washington Post reported how Mr. X kept the career history of top Soviet officials on 800 index cards stashed away in cardboard shoeboxes.
“What we have on any Soviet leader is highly idiosyncratic. Riddled with holes,” Graves told the Washington Post. “It’s an archaic, hand-operated, paper-and-pencil system. But there is no real alternative to it.”
Gordon Graves said his brother was able to link things together far better than most anyone else. “He gave the U.S. insight into what the Soviets were doing, not what they were saying. He was the best they had.”
Insight into the inner workings of the Kremlin led Graves to predict in 1986 the fall of the Soviet Union. That analysis contradicted the foreign policy of the Reagan administration so Graves was removed from his position as Chief of Soviet Internal Affairs in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Graves continued to work in the intelligence field and later returned to the bureau under the first Bush administration.
“There was not much Don could talk about. Most of his job was classified,” Gordon Graves said.
Run of the mill
Born April 10, 1929 in Bennington, VT, Donald Graves grew up next door to poet Robert Frost. After his parents divorced, Donald Graves moved to Connecticut with his mother, two brothers Gordon and Frederick and sister Francis.
There he attended high school in Milford CT before the family moved to Carlisle in 1946. The brothers were disappointed by having to move away from their home on the beach where they could swim, sail and fish in the ocean.
In Pennsylvania, times were rough as the Graves family tried to modernize an old home and turn the mill into a profitable business.
Fearing an economic depression after World War II, their mother Marian Towsley Graves purchased the mill thinking it was a safe investment only to discover it was a lot more difficult work than she expected and she lacked knowledge on the customer base.
Brothers Donald and Gordon would take the morning bus to Carlisle High School some miles away, only to return in the afternoon to help their mother and study for their classes.
Gordon Graves described Donald as a “straight A student” who was always in his room studying. “It was difficult going through school behind him,” Gordon Graves recalled. “Teachers always asked me ‘You’re Don Graves brother?’”
The brothers would form up baseball teams with other local youth. Don, who usually played as catcher or shortstop, remained an avid baseball fan his entire life. “When there was a game on, everything stopped,” Gordon Graves said.
Dickinson connection
Graduating in 1947, Donald Graves enlisted in the Army and served in occupied Germany where he worked on intercepts of Soviet radio transmissions.
Hester Graves of Ann Arbor, Mich., is Donald Graves’ daughter. She said her father wanted to go to college, but could not afford it so he enlisted in the Army because of the GI Bill.
It was the early days of the Cold War and her father soon realized the Army and federal government could use some help in understanding the Russians, she said.
Donald Graves returned to Carlisle to attend Dickinson College where he received a bachelors degree, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1950. He made many friends while at Dickinson and regularly attended alumni functions.
“He managed to come back for reunions,” Gordon Graves said. “He would greet the incoming freshman class giving them pointers on everything from how to dress at a banquet to what study method works best.”
Later, his brother attended Colby College in Maine and received his master’s degree in Russian studies from Harvard University in 1962. He then entered the Central Intelligence Agency where he edited a digest of the Soviet Press.
In 1974 to 1976, Donald Graves served in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow as First Secretary and head of the Internal Affairs branch of the Political section. He received many honors, including an award for meritorious service.
Later, he entered the intelligence section of the State Department in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He also lectured on Soviet affairs at many colleges and universities.
Donald Graves married Louise I. Shelley, an American graduate student studying Russian in Moscow. Together, they had two children -- Richard Graves of Washington D.C. and Hester Graves.
Language whiz
Hester Graves remembers feeling frustrated by how her parents used to speak Russian at the dinner table when they wanted to discuss something serious. At night, her father used to read the children stories by Pushkin in English.
Her father was such a language whiz he could carry on a conversation in English while translating a document in Russian into English. “He was very proud of this,” Hester Graves said.
Donald Graves enjoyed coming back to Carlisle to visit his mother, other family members and college friends. It was a welcome change of pace from the busy Washington scene.
Hester Graves remembers walking around Children’s Lake in Boiling Springs. An avid gardener, her father planted an orchard of hazlenut, black walnut and fruit trees at the former family home outside Carlisle.
Gordon Graves described his brother Donald as being a “precise” person with a “very dry sense of humor.” “Donald constantly challenged himself to learn new things,” Gordon Graves said.
In retirement, Donald Graves volunteered over 2,000 hours creating audio tape for the Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic program. A sailor, gardener, master furniture craftsman and home renovator, he was a Boy Scout leader in Washington.
The Washington Post reported Donald Graves supported the struggle against Soviet oppression by secretly helping Norton Dodge, a Maryland college professor, collect 20,000 works by dissident Soviet artists and smuggle them out of the Soviet Union.
The art is now on display at Rutgers University.
