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Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America

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Like Hugo's fictional Inspector Javert, historians Haynes and Klehr are dogged in the pursuit of their quarry--American communists who betrayed their country through covert relationships with the KGB in the 1930s and 40s. Nevermind the fact that the Statute of Limitations has long since expired on these crimes, or that the characters themselves were long ago swept into the dust bin of history, the historians have devoted their careers to exposing the perfidy of secret communists, and to hauling their corpses, time and again, before the court of public opinion. It is the historians' investigative spadework and their constrained sense of justice at long last being served which provides the narrative drive to "Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America."

Much of the evidence presented in the book is drawn from the notebooks of the Russian journalist Alexander Vassiliev. In 1993 Vassiliev was granted limited access to the KGB's operational files for the 1930s and 1940s. His transcripts of pages from these files would eventually fill 8 notebooks comprising more than 1000 pages. Summaries of the documents were used in writing the book "The Haunted Wood (1998)," which Vassiliev co-authored with Allen Weinstein. In a lengthy introduction to "Spies," Vassiliev tells the story of his notebooks and his defamation suit against the publisher Frank Cass. He also paints a sympathetic portrait of the American spies, whom he views as heroes, which helps to counterbalance the more severe portrait painted by Haynes and Klehr.

The authors open the book by revisiting the Hiss case in a chapter subtitled "Case Closed." Aside from conspiracy theorists for whom there exists no untainted Hiss evidence, it seems impossible not to agree with the authors' contention that Hiss was a committed communist and a Red Army (GRU) source until his exposure in 1948. Some of the evidence in this chapter was documented earlier by Vassiliev in the "Haunted Wood," and the lengthier treatment given here by Haynes and Klehr fully corroborates the sixty-year-old testimony of Hede Massing and Whittaker Chambers. The authors cite new evidence from the KGB files of Michael Straight and Lawrence Duggan which confirms Hiss's bona-fides as a GRU agent. They also argue persuasively, using both Venona and Vassiliev material, that Hiss was the agent cover named JURIST, LEONARD, and ALES; and they supply the likely identity of the party worker, cover named PAUL, who became Hiss's liaison with the GRU following Whittaker Chamber's defection.

For readers interested in the atom-bomb spies, the book is a treasure-trove of new information. The Venona decrypts exposed the damaging Los Alamos spies MLAD (Theodore Alvin Hall) and STAR (Saville Sax), but researchers were unable to identify all the people behind the cover names in the decrypted Soviet cables. The masks have now been ripped from the faces of these spies. The authors reveal the name of PERS/FOGEL, an engineer recruited into espionage by Julius Rosenburg; the name of QUANTUM, a foriegn scientist who, in exchange for money, delivered atomic information to the Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C.; the name of ERIC, a refugee Austrian physicist at the Cavendish Laboratory who provided atomic research to the Soviets in Great Britain; and the name of RELE/SERB, the crippled Spanish Civil War veteran who supplied technical data on sonar. After sifting the evidence, the authors conclude that Robert Oppenheimer was a concealed member of the CPUSA in the late 30s, but that he distanced himself from the party and did not supply information to the KGB. Unfortunately, Vassiliev was granted access to only a single file pertaining to atomic espionage and the authors can shed no new light on the continuing debate about whether the Soviets obtained the secret of the hydrogen bomb from penetration agents.

The chapters on the U.S. government and the OSS corroborate the testimony of Elizabeth Bentley, the "Red Spy Queen," and supplement the voluminous FBI "Silvermaster File." The names of many heretofore unknown secret KGB agents are also revealed. Certainly two of the most interesting and colorful are LEO, an immigrant journalist, and WILLY, the Director of the Bureau of Indexes and Archives at the State Department. This mercenary pair engaged in a racket selling copies of State Department cables to the KGB for money. When they pretended to recruit a third agent and asked the KGB for a larger sum, their greed was discovered. The pair had a falling out and their names disappear from the KGB files, though in a curious twist of fate, WILLY would later appear as a government expert in the Hiss case. The authors expose spy after spy and it is by this slow, mounting presentation of evidence that the reader is led to the conclusion that far more Americans, operating on a far larger scale than had been previously imagined, conspired with the KGB in the 1930-40s. The apparatus employed Americans as couriers, talent spotters, watchers, journalists, bagmen, legitimate fronts, photographers, and agent handlers. There were hundreds of Americans who secretly abetted Stalin's KGB.

To meet the needs of Stalin's policy of forced industrialization, the KBG actively recruited spies with technical/scientific information. Some acted as paid informants, while others, such as the Rosenburgs, were motivated by ideology. The past two decades have not been kind to Rosenburg defenders. In 1995 the Venona decrypts identified Julius as the Soviet spy with the cover names LIBERAL and ANTENNA; in 2001 Alexander Feklisov, the Rosenburg's Soviet handler, published "The Man Behind the Rosenburgs;" and in September 2008 Rosenburg accomplice Morton Sobell, after decades of denial, confessed that he was an active participant in Julius's spy apparatus. Haynes and Klehr add to our knowledge of the Rosenburg apparatus by exposing the agents PERS and TUK, and by pointing out that Rosenburg agents YAKOV, METER, and HUGHES delivered an extraordinary cache of classified technical information to the Soviets. The only reasonable act left in this drama is for the Russian government to admit that the Rosenburgs were Soviet spies and to build a monument in their honor.

The book is arranged as a series of topically related biographical sketches and one criticism of Haynes and Klehr is that they do not provide enough context for readers unfamiliar with the ideological landscape of the 1930s. The book does not help us to understand why so many Americans joined the communist party in the 1930s and why a number became witting agents for the Comintern, GRU, and KGB. And it also does not give a clear explanation as to why many of these same people abandoned their communist faith in the years prior to McCarthy's speech at Wheeling. It is ironic that the fortunes of the KBG in American were at their lowest ebb at precisely the moment when the 1950's "Red Scare" began. Readers can gain a greater understanding of the milieu by seeking out Vivian Gornick's "The Romance of American Communism" or Whittaker Chamber's autobiography "Witness."

For many years, "Spies" will remain the definitive history of the golden-age of Soviet espionage in America.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain,serious historians have started to incorporate in their research about the Cold War era the various aspects about intelligence and espionage activities perpetrated by the sides involved in this ideological conflict.It is already a well- established and known fact that the Cold War was also a war of shadows which has had a significant impact on the relations between the East and the West.
The current book gives us a fascinating tale about the different activities,plots and machinations woven by the Russian spymasters during the thirties and forties of the previous century. Based on the documents transcribed by Alexander Vassiliev, who was a former KGB employee,the authors describe to what extent the USA was penetrated by and riddled with spies who came in all varieties and from all corners of the United States.Those spies were "men and women, Jews and gentiles,old-stock Americans, etc.While some spies grew up in poverty ,others basked in luxury from their childhoods.Some,like Alger Hiss,were graduates of Ivy Leagues colleges;others were born in Russia and retained a visceral national loyalty."
Many of them feared the rise of Fascism;others were disappointed by capitalism, or had strong ideological beliefs in a Communist utopia ,believing they were serving a higher cause.
The book has chapters on Alger Hiss, confirming he was a Russian spy.Many famous journallists were employed in this big game, including I.B STONE and Ernest Hemingway(although the last one was a dilettante spy).Some were caught and confessed,(like Klaus Fuchs) and some testified against their comrades(like David Greenglass),but most agents simply lied or took the Fifth Amendment.Other chapters include new information about celebrities recruited by the KGB(such as the sexual gymnast and daughter of the American ambassador to Berlin Martha Dodd )as well as a chapter on the infiltration of the US government.
The authors highlight the fact that we should not fall captives to the perception that the KGB operations across the USA were a total success.The Bentley confessions dealt a serious blow to the Russians.True,the KGB stations managed to produce vital information regarding scientific and technological data, which saved the Soviet Union a lot of money and resources ,because as a result, the Russians could build and atomic bomb and and other military equipment.Journalists provided the KGB insights into American diplomatic,military and economic developments and plans.The sub-text of this wonderfully well-researched book is that the American counterintelligence was a failure due to its inability to have a wider perspective on the possible dangers which could have arisen not only from the Germans and the Japanese during World War Two.Thus many words uttered from the mouth of Joseph McCarthy were true and he was not just "seeing Reds under every carpet".
Ideology could lead astray many intelligent people,who became blind and were duped by false and naive beliefs which led them to become traitors.

Much like Haynes and Klehr's earlier work, this is a fascinating and meticulously well documented look at Soviet espionage from the 30's and 40's. This book is also short on polemic tirades (refreshingly so) and the authors stick to a "facts only" approach, not making statements that cannot be well supported and documented.

There are lengthy sections on the big fish like IF Stone whose covert work for the KGV/NKVD is now documented beyond any doubt and "philosopher" Corliss Lamont (who damn near became a US senator) whose work for the KGB/NKVD while mainly circumstantial is damning. Tepidly unreliable agents like Ernest Hemingway who the KGB eventually gave up on and Robert Oppenheimer the one that despite the Soviet's best efforts, got away are also extensively covered in the book.

Unlike their earlier work though, this book contains many pages on some of the lesser well know, but numerous everydayers that the Soviets had in their employment.

Overall, a great read for anyone interested in espionage, leftist politics or McCarthyism.

"Spies - The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America", by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev represents an almost definitive account of Soviet espionage in the 1930s and 1940s. Its new information is mostly based on the notebooks of Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB officer, who in the Yeltsin years was allowed to peruse the NKVD/MGB/KGB files on this eventful period, which ranges from the thirties to WW II and the sternest years of the Cold War, for a joint project with Crown Publishers. The project was abandoned because of the publisher's demise and Vassiliev flew to the UK, with his notebooks. To anyone who still had doubts on Alger Hiss's culpability, as well as on Laurence Duggan's and Harry Dexter White's, this book should constitute an eye-opener. Among the revelations, notable is that of Congressman Samuel Dickstein's venal but ineffective spying for Soviet intelligence. One can only regret that GRU (military intelligence) files have remained out of bounds, since these would shed a fuller light on Alger Hiss's espionage activities: Hiss had indeed been for several years a GRU source, before being turned over to Soviet civilian intelligence.

I have just finished this magnificent book. It is a welcome anecdote to those in America who prefer for whatever reasons to deny that the Soviets actively pursued U.S. secrets from the inception of the USSR until its final days. Fans of I.F. Stone will not like it. However, this book cannot be read in isolation as the same authors have pursued similar projects, using Soviet archival documents when possible.

This is a book about liars and deceivers. A history (circa World War II)of people who lied and deceived others - and themselves - in the service of a foreign nation whose objective was to radically change the political landscape of America by force if necessary. This is not a romantic (in the classical sense) book about James Bond thrills. This is about dirty, little, lying weasels who stabbed their fellow Americans in the back. How they could reconcile their mawkish philosophical motivations with progressive idealism after the Nazis and the Soviets made a bloody agreement to attack Poland is beyond me. Next to them, Joe McCarthy is a saint.

One unresolved issue that the authors did not tackle was the question why so many educated jewish people spied for the USSR on a country that provided them with refuge from ancient European prejudices, and a good life? Admittedly, this is a topic in itself for a book. Vassiliev, a coauthor whose translations of KGB documents made the book possible, thinks the spies were heroes of the USSR. Maybe, but they are not my heroes.

Finally, the book is not an easy read. It has a very large cast of characters and is extensively footnoted. If you follow every footnote as you read along then you will surely go mad. Take my advice and flip through the footnotes after you plow through nearly 600 pages of text,with no illustrations or photos to break the monotony.

But make no mistake, this is an important historical document. I highly recommend it.

Early Soviet spying in the United States was more than Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. More than the Rosenbergs and David Greenglass. More than Klaus Fuchs.

The duo of American authors, relying largely on Vassilev's near-exhaustive research, show just how extensive this spying was in the 1930s and 40s, some of the areas it penetrated besides the Manhattan Project and more.

If you ever doubted the snooping of Hiss, or Harry Dexter White, this book goes even deeper than Venona. If you want to learn a bit about the amount of military espionage Julius Rosenberg and some fellow engineering recruits did, it's here.

At the same time, the book has a few issues.

One is the subhead. No, the KGB did not "fall," at least not permanently. And, some of its successes in the 1960s and later were almost as big as in the 1940s.

Second, the material in this book gets a bit numbing at tmies with real names and KGB handles intertwined and other things without more organization. In short, it reads like one of its authors is a librarian with the Library of Congress.

I would have written this much differently. Throw out a full chapter devoted to Hiss. He's guilty, and you're not going to convince any fellow travelers otherwise. Rather, make an opening chapter a chronological one, starting with the work of Amtorg before the US diplomatically recognized the USSR. Then a chapter on Manhattan Project spying. Then, a chapter on non-Manhattan military espionage. Then, one on non-military industrial espionage, as in the XY line. Then one on government spies, dropping Hiss in here. Combine the "couriers/support" chapter with more on how the CPUSA was involved. And, in the conclusion, without going into too many details, note how the KGB would go on to "rise" again, and why.

In other words, this is a good book. But, primarily due to poor writing and editing, it falls a fair degree short of being a great one.

SPIES: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE KGB IN AMERICA
HARVEY KLEHR, JOHN EARL HAYNES, AND ALEXANDER VASSILIEV
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2009
HARDCOVER, $35.00, 704 PAGES, PHOTOGRAPHS


A common perception is that, both before and after the Second World War, the British establishment was penetrated by Soviet spies (most notably by the Cambridge Spy Ring) while America somehow escaped infiltration. This important new book, SPIES: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE KGB IN AMERICA, however, which is based on archival material-a rare luxury for intelligence historians-shows the huge extent of Soviet espionage activity in the United States during the 20th Century.

The authors estimate that from the 1920s, more than 500 Americans from all walks of life, including many Ivy League graduates and Oxford Rhodes scholars, were recruited to assist Soviet intelligence agencies, particularly in the State Department and America's first intelligence agency, the OSS.

Authors John Early Haynes and Harvey Klehr have previously collaborated on books about the Venona spy intercepts and American communism. Their co-author, Alexander Vassiliev, a Russian journalist and former intelligence officer, collaborated on The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage In America. That book was based on controlled Russian intelligence documents, access to which was negotiated during a moment of Glasnost in the 1990s with a view to supplementing the KGB pension fund, championing Russian intelligence successes and creating a bit of disinformation mischief. What hadn't been known until recently, is that while working on The Haunted Wood book, Vassiliev had transcribed and summarised innumerable KGB documents which he had smuggled out with him-more than 1,000 pages of notes-when he began a new life in America. It is this information which forms the basis of SPIES: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE KGB IN AMERICA.

Placed alongside the Venona intercepts of Soviet intelligence communications, the evidence from the Mitrokhin archive of Soviet foreign intelligence-brought to the West and published in 1999 and 2005-and the testimony of defectors, it has now been possible to fill in much of the Soviet espionage puzzle putting real names to cover names and identifying new spies.

Joe McCarthy was right after all. There were Communists in the State Department. Maybe not the number he claimed or even the ones he suspected, Soviet spies were, indeed, employed by the U.S. government in the 1930s and 1940s.

This book also shows just how many journalists worked for the KGB and argues that, while Ernest Hemingway (codenamed 'Argo') never provided significant information, he was recruited in 1941 and was in contact with Soviet agents for several years. The authors are also not afraid of setting the record straight. They prove, for example, that J. Robert Oppenheimer, denounced for the last 50 years as the most damaging Soviet spy inside the Manhattan Project to build the atom bomb, was targeted but never became a KGB spy. Another revelation is the confirmation in ore than twenty KGB documents of Harry Dexter White's involvement in Soviet espionage. One of the architects of the Bretton Woods monetary agreement, White was senior advisor to the delegation at the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco and gave away the US negotiating strategy. He assured his KGB case officer that if the Soviet diplomats held firm on the USSR veto of UN actions, then the Americans 'will agree'.

SPIES: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE KGB IN AMERICA is a serious book, whose effectiveness is built up with detail, and it makes for sober reading both in terms of style and content. This also may be the most authoritative history of the Soviet Union's efforts to spy on America during the 1930s and 1940s.



Lt. Colonel Robert A. Lynn, Florida Guard
Orlando, Florida

This is a scholarly treaties, not an easy read. I have limited myself to reading the last chapter ("The Fall".)

"Spies" is one of the very best books about the early Soviet espionage in America. Inspired from KGB archives, the book had at least a solid credibility, as was the case with Mitrokhin archive. I read a book which is almost complete, interesting and definitely resolves long-seething controversies on particular cases (Hiss, Stone etc).
No wonder, the Hiss case is showed in the 1st chapter, closing forever this debate (in 32 pages) following a lengthy introduction.
The atomic spies received a particular attention in the longest chapter of the book. (no less than 112 pages!)
This chapter is an in-depth analysis of the successes and failures of the Soviet agents in obtaining the secrets of the atomic bomb.
Chapter 3 identified the journalist spies (50 pages), while chapter 4 treated the infiltration of US government (98 pages).
I was particular interested in the identification of the Soviet spies in OSS and the book answered with interesting cases (12 spies were presented, an impressive number achieved in only 3 years!).
This chapter is followed with the agents recruited in the scientific technical field.
The next two chapters dealt with couriers and support personnel and also celebrities cases.
The last chapter showed the strengths and weaknesses of the KGB operations in US. As this one were not enough we also having an interesting conclusion.
An interesting and I believe the most striking point which is revealed in this book is the sheer number of Americans who assisted KGB agents. No less than 500 persons were involved in espionage activities, only a portion of who have been discussed in this book. At one point (page 73), the authors wrote that more than 175 cover names of American spies were never linked to real names.
In spite of being is presented in a very dry fashion (case after case-the result of archived material), but with no photos, this book is a remarkable study about the Soviet espionage in the US during 1930s and 1940s.
Moreover, "Spies" can supplement other interesting books about Soviet intelligence operations, which also treated the same specific subject ("The Sword and the shield vol.1", "The haunted wood", etc).