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Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History

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Historians are still writing about megalomaniacs who attempted to conquer the world by force and subversion in order to impose their ideology on society. HITLER and STALIN come quickly to mind. And while both employed intelligence operations to further their objectives, only the Soviet Union systematically integrated espionage, deception, and terror to advance its worldwide foreign policy and maintain domestic security. Many books have been written describing the operations, the personnel, and the organizations-KGB and GRU-involved. Jerrold and Leona SCHECTER have written one, Special Tasks, the story of KGB officer Pavel SUDOPLATOV. And Jerrold SCHECTER co-authored another with former KGB officer Peter DERIABIN, The Spy Who Saved The World, the story of GRU Colonel Oleg PENKOVSKY. But not until Sacred Secrets has the emphasis shifted to the impact of intelligence operations on the history of two societies-the United States and the Soviet Union.
We learn that a KGB agent of influence in the American government shaped American the policy that led to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. And, despite pledges to the contrary, the Soviet Union spied on its American ally throughout WWII using agents recruited from the American Communist Party. Robert OPENHEIMER was one such source as the letter to NKGB Chairman BERIA reproduced in the book, makes clear. Furthermore, as was their way, after the war the Soviets were largely successful in blaming America for not giving them the war time secrets desired outright, so spies wouldn't be necessary-it was America's fault. At first, many Americans either supported this view or denied that any serious espionage had even occurred. The FBI knew them to be wrong-disillusioned defectors had made that clear. But their evidence could not at first be made public. The most valuable revelations-contained in broken KGB codes-would not surface for 50 years. Liberal doubts and right-wing certainty-both wrong-became part of the daily news diet in the 1940s and 50s. But once aroused, using straight forward counter-espionage techniques and the results of government cryptanalysis, the FBI shut down the Soviet networks and ended the era of the ideological spy.
Scared Secrets makes clear that despite these losses, Moscow did not end its espionage program after WWII. In fact, it quickly attempted to reestablish its illegal networks and in later years it took advantage of the greed-incentive made attractive by American walk-ins from WALKER to HANSSEN, with many in between. America had its own Cold War successes and the SCHECTERS describe several including a new twist on the acquisition of the KRUSHCHEV secret speech-interesting despite their use of the oxymoron defector-in-place. In the end, America's technological prowess overcame the Soviet espionage and military threat, bankrupting the Soviet Union in the process-America won the Cold War. Sacred Secrets documents well these often ironic contradictions.
The SCHECTERS make a persuasive case that, contrary to the moral relativism advocates of the political-left, the United States did not start the Cold War or force the Soviet Union to do so. Would America's post WWII policies have been different had Soviet espionage and subversion in America not been so politically oriented and active? Read Sacred Secrets for the answer.

Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History by historians Jerrold and Leona Schecter is an informed and informative examination of the hidden agendas and secrets of the Cold War, and an impressive study of the pervasive influence that Soviet intelligence operations exacted upon American politics, economics, and more, ranging from Pearl Harbor through Star Wars. An intriguing, compelling, articulate analysis, Sacred Secrets is highly recommended reading for students of Soviet and U.S. Cold War political history, international studies, cryptography, and intelligence operations.

In the interests of honesty and fairness, I will state at the outset that my evaluation of this book is based solely on the several pages of the book devoted to the Vietnam War, since that is my one and only area of expertise. The information the Schecters' provide in other sections of the book on Soviet operations and agents in the West may be outstanding and exactly on target for all I know, but in light of what is contained in the pages devoted to Vietnam, I fear that is not the case. The entire section on Vietnam consisted of what are clearly anecdotal stories and rumors from Soviet sources. The only sourcing provided in the endnotes for any of the information in these pages is "confidential source," which is meaningless. The first anecdote in the section, about a Soviet missile officer who shot down three U.S. jets with one missile on 24 July 1965, captured and interrogated the pilots, and personally murdered one of them, is ludicrous. Both Soviet and Vietnamese records (publicly available) state clearly that Soviet missile personnel manned the launch sites that fired that day, which was the first day that surface-to-air missiles were used during the Vietnam War. However, if the Schecters had done even the most rudimentary research, they would have found that only ONE U.S. aircraft was shot down by surface-to-air missiles on 24 July 1965 day (the other two U.S. aircraft lost that day were hit over Laos, hundreds of miles from the surface-to-air missile sites), and that only two (not three) aircrewmen were lost that day. The fact that the Schecters did not even check the U.S. loss records, which are public and available on the internet and in books as well as in government archives, does not say much for their diligence, and it certainly calls into question just how reliable the rest of the information presented in this book really is.

Most of the author's findings and re-interpretations of the Venona data (by now well wrung-out), while provocative in the extreme, offers no controversy, as those data are backed up not only by what is presented here but are also solidly confirmed by other independent researchers and sources. Findings such as the Rosenberg's and Harry Dexter White's treachery, even Oppenheimer being at the very least a Soviet agent of influence, are now more or less established facts: convincing conclusions that flow cleanly from what has been uncovered and thus conclusions that any reasonable reader of this book and of the historical record might come to believe in.

However, on the other hand, some of the author's findings such as their most provocative claim here, that Soviet Intelligence, working both sides of the fence behind the scenes, drove the U.S. and Japan to war, in my view are utterly unconvincing. And furthermore, seem a bit of a contrivance brought about by a clear "over-determination" of, and an "over-interpretation" of, if not indeed and over-reading" of the preponderance of their data and supporting information. It appears (at least to this reader) that these two masters of the spy game themselves, may have fallen victim to having their own tails caught in an explanatory trap of their own making.

In this instance, I leaned over backwards to hear them out, to give their interpretation the full benefit of the doubt, yet I could find no daylight between their own rather tortuous version of the spy games (which they themselves participated in), and a simpler one that suggests that due to the mere exigencies of the events of the time, both sides would have made the same decisions without the "supposed" influence of Soviet intelligence.

These authors seem to have forgotten that there are many alternative interpretations of the same data, all equally convincing to some unspecified audience. And while the difference alluded to above might at first seem like a mere nuance, is it indeed not incumbent upon the authors to first acknowledge this difference, and then to demonstrate that it is more than just a nuance?

In my humble opinion, with the carefully orchestrated data presented here, these authors have not done this, but have instead done just the opposite: used the very large areas of overlap in the two possible interpretations (the mere weight of events versus the influence of Soviet intelligence) to further conflate the two and lend unwarranted credence to their own explanation? And while doing this does indeed make for a provocative and a good "after-the-fact spy story," those of us not heavily invested in the spy game and in spy-laden interpretations, can clearly tell the difference between the two.

The evidence pointing to the authors' interpretation that Soviet intelligence drove the U.S. and Japan to war, as the sole and only correct explanation, based on the data presented here simply does not hold up under serious scrutiny. A less accusatory way of putting this is to say that perhaps these two masters of the spy game have simply over-determined and then simply over-interpreted their data, data that for very obvious reasons may have been a bit too close to their hearts and their own respective careers. Three stars