Amazon.com
Some historians and journalists are starting to regard the cold-war-era American Communist Party as nothing more than a quaint club of polite if misguided ideologues. In The Venona Secrets, Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel intend to create a new impression of treacherous Americans "who willfully gave their primary allegiance to a foreign power, the USSR.... For Communists, true patriotism meant helping to make the world a better place by advancing the interests of the Soviet Union in any way possible." By using the now-celebrated Venona documents--top-secret Soviet cables sent between Moscow and Washington, D.C., in the 1940s--Romerstein and Breindel tell a frightening story of how deeply spies penetrated the U.S. government. There was the famous case of Alger Hiss, whose guilt as a Soviet spy is now beyond doubt thanks to Venona. Less well known, but still important, were the roles of Harry Hopkins in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's White House and Harry Dexter White in the Treasury Department.
Romerstein, a veteran cold warrior, and Breindel, the former editorial-page editor of The New York Post (he died before the book's publication, at the age of 42), are not the first to discuss the Venona papers in depth--readers of The Haunted Wood, by Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, and Whittaker Chambers, by Sam Tanenhaus, will know much of the story. Yet this may its most aggressive telling. Romerstein and Breindel include necessary chapters on the Hiss-Chambers dispute, the Elizabeth Bentley spy ring, and the charges against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They are particularly forceful in arguing that journalist I.F. Stone and atomic scientist Robert Oppenheimer were Soviet spies. Another target--and a provocative one--is Albert Einstein, whom they describe as "tainted" by his indirect ties to Soviet intelligence. The Venona Secrets will make heads turn, and it will show that the debates over the cold war and its meaning can be as hot now as they were then. --John J. Miller
Book Description
The Venona Files are several intercepted communiques between the Soviet Union and American Communists following WWII.
Customer Reviews:
Shocking Details.......2007-07-03
Much in the way revelations about the cracking of the German Enigma code have forever altered the history of the Second World War, the Venona Secrets should change the history of Soviet espionage in the United States.
This book reveals details about the extensive Soviet penetration of the Communist Party of the United States, unions, the government, industry, the Democratic Party and the media. No account of the era of McCarthyism can be viewed as complete without including some evidence of how extensive was the decades-long Soviet infiltration of the U.S. government at the highest levels -- including Harry Hopkins, a close advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt -- and of the atomic program. Soviet spying, which led to the Russian atomic bomb only four years after our own, reached the highest levels of the Manhattan Project, including J. Robert Oppenheimer; Soviet spies even targeted Albert Einstein for anti-Western propaganda efforts.
One result of the successful Soviet atomic spying was that Stalin, who knew about the atomic bomb, felt secure in giving the green light for the North Korean invasion of the south in 1950, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties.
My only, relatively minor, criticism of the book is that it is almost too detailed for a casual student of history. As someone who hasn't studied Soviet history for twenty years, some of the names had faded from my memory.
A Biased Account.......2007-02-22
The Venona Secrets is a deceptive book. It tries to pass itself off as an objective portrait of Soviet spying in the US, but by the time the reader is a third of the way in it becomes apparent that the authors are more interested in smearing "Liberals" than in painting a true portrait of their subject. Although the information the authors provide is interesting, the biased and heavy-handed way it's presented negates whatever scientific value it might have. For example, the authors insist that J. Robert Oppenheimer was working for the Soviets (they call this a "fact") yet they present absolutely no proof that Oppenheimer was anything more than an idealistic, naive man who couldn't keep his mouth shut and whose only contribution to the advancement of Communism in America was money to the CPUSA. The book is full of these so-called "facts" with little to nothing to back them up. The authors praise Joe McCarthy and claim in the last chapter of the book that he was barely a factor in the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1940's and 1950's, ignoring the fact that MCCarthy capitalized on fears of Communism obscenely and was wrong far more than he was right about who was and was not loyal. McCarthy's methods of terrorism and hypocrisy in running hearings that could have been chaired by Stalin are completely overlooked, as are the innocent lives he destroyed in his smear campaign. The authors also praise Senator Henry Jackson as some sort of all-American crusader against Communism, not even mentioning that all of Jackson's anti-Communist attacks were motivated by his virulent anti-Semistism and hatred of blacks. Overall this book is nothing more than an indictment of Liberal ideology -- one can simply hear the disdain for Liberals dripping from the authors' prose -- and should not be given much credence by scholars not interested in right-wing propaganda who want an objective account of Venona. The authors have sacrificed their credibility for their Conservative agenda; they deserve not to be taken seriously.
An Important Book on USSR espionage.......2006-08-13
If you went to school before the Soviet archives & Venona papers were opened up/released (1991-1995), you must read this book. If you don't know what the Venona Project's papers say, then your knowledge on immediate pre and post WWII Soviet espionage is incomplete and, most importantly, probably not accurate. The truth is uncomfortable to some- Alger Hiss was definitely a spy, as were the Rosenbergs, and penetration into New Deal personnel was very deep. Plenty of material for the anti-FDR types, and the "McCarthy was right" folks. I personally feel very uncomfortable with the fact that about 2 our of every 3 names that pop up here as spies were Jewish. Most humiliating. The authors, no anti-semites they, make the irony of Jews spying for the virulent Jew-hater Uncle Joe very clear. Like many peoples, though perhaps more so, Jews have an unfortunate tendency towards self-delusion. The book is a bit of a bumpy read, sometimes flowing smoothly, sometimes reading like its out of Reader's Digest (a bit...lowbrow??), which accounts for the 4 stars, rather than 5. It has photos of many of the spies, but overall the photographs could be much stronger.
The Facts Laid Bare.......2006-07-17
This book is the most complete "who's who" of the entire Soviet Communist movement from the early 1900s on. It effectively destroys the old notions that there was no connection between the Communist Party U.S.A. and Moscow. It demonstrates beyond question that Moscow's two-fold plan in the United States - influencing government policy and spying - were carried out for years by the people identified in the government hearings. The Venona decrypts, together with the examination of Soviet and American Communist archives, bring together the entire despicable story. A must-read book for those who want to sort fact from fiction concerning the history of the Soviet Union.
Organized More as a Reference Book than Straight Read.......2005-12-31
Traitors, of course, imply treason and that is exactly the charge Romerstein and Breindel substantiate in this book. Specifically, that the American Communist Party was a knowing tool for Soviet espionage; that the alleged anti-fascism of American Communists was a facade unsupported by their behavior during the German-Russian Non-Aggression Pact; that American Communists probably supplied Nazi Germany with military secrets during that period; that the U.S. government of the 1940s was riddled with Soviet agents including Alger Hiss and Harry Hopkins, personal friend and advisor to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and that J. Robert Oppenheimer was among the Soviet spies on the Manhatten Project.
The decoding of Soviet messages from 1940-1948, coupled with documents from the Communist governments of the former Warsaw Pact, provides the evidence for these charges.
Romerstein and Breindel write in a clear prose, and this book can be read fairly easily cover to cover in a few sittings. However, its organization seems more that of a reference book for scholars of Soviet espionage and U.S. political history rather than a straightforward narrative. The individual chapters cover the most famous spy rings operating in the U. S. during the years of the Venona message, espionage directed toward stealing nuclear secrets, anti-Trotskyite activities, and co-opting journalists for propaganda purposes. The index is comprehensive and includes listing for the many code names used by the NKVD and GRU.
There is some interesting material on the struggle to root Communists out of American unions. The question of Jewish involvement in Soviet espionage is briefly and unsatisfyingly touched on. The authors acknowledge that Jews had a heavy and disproportionately involvement in the early Soviet intelligence services. But it is also true that Jews later became a target of those same organizations and Jews were purged out of them. What was the initial attraction to begin with?
However, there is a repetition of details about individual agents from chapter to chapter and no attempt to give a chronology of their activities. I suspect the authors organized the book around the idea that their fellow scholars would simply pick individual chapters to read depending on their interests rather than completely read the book.
This is not a biographical look at spies. For instance, we get almost no idea why Elizabeth Bentley went from NKVD agent to double agent for the FBI. It was perhaps because her NKVD lover/controller Jacob Golos had died, and she was miffed at the NKVD's lack of confidence in her ability to continue to run agents. Likewise, we are presented with no explanation for Jack Childs remark "What took you so long?" to the FBI when they confronted him about decades of spying for the USSR.
While the book offers a brief explanation on the interception and decoding of the Venona messages, there are certainly better accounts of it elsewhere.
The book does have a nice appendix where we are presented with several photocopies of the decoded Venona messages so you get a feel of the raw data the authors worked with and what the NSA and its predecessor, the U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Service, produced in a job that lasted until 1980.
Amazon.com
With this new volume, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr build upon their groundbreaking work in The Secret World of American Communism and solidify their reputations as the foremost historians of Soviet espionage in America. In Venona, they provide a detailed study of how the United States decrypted top-secret Communist cables moving between Washington and Moscow. This account, based on information unavailable to researchers for decades, reveals the full extent of the Communist spy network in the 1940s. At least 349 citizens, immigrants, and permanent residents of the United States had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence agencies, among them Harry White (assistant secretary of the treasury in FDR's administration and the Communists' highest-ranking asset) and State Department official Alger Hiss, whose association with the Soviets had been hotly debated since the moment he was first publicly accused in 1948.
"The Soviet assault was of the type a nation directs at an enemy state," write Haynes and Klehr. They go on to suggest that Venona's code-breaking "indicated that the Cold War was not a state of affairs that had begun after World War II but a guerilla action that Stalin had secretly started years earlier." Moreover, "espionage saved the USSR great expense and industrial investment and thereby enabled the Soviets to build a successful atomic bomb years before they otherwise would have." Haynes and Klehr deliver what is at once a real-life spy thriller and a vital piece of scholarship. A grand achievement. --John J. Miller
Customer Reviews:
Great research, but somewhat moralistic.......2007-04-26
Informative, though reads a little like a phonebook. The all-too-often repeated pattern: so-and-so -- name, birthdate, birthplace, education -- became a Soviet agent, and passed such and such secrets (and so on for about hundred times). Motives of individual agents are seldom explored (though the final chapter has important insights into the "why" of agent work), while the authors rush to make moralistic judgments: so and so betrayed his country, so and so committed treachery, how many lives would have been saved had the Soviets not learned of US military or atomic secrets!
The argument that Stalin would have been much more circumspect and cooperative if he had not obtained a bomb in 1949 is not convincing in the light of what is now known of his foreign policy behavior; indeed, Stalin's apprehension of US military superiority only made him more stubborn and adamant in the face of perceived American pressure.
Was MaCarthy right about the communist conspiracy? This book shows that some of his allegations were justified, though not his paranoia.
The book makes the argument that US security was lax, allowing spies to penetrate all government agencies and even the Manhattan project. Indeed, US efforts to penetrate the Soviet atomic project came to nothing, and recent research shows that Stalin took much greater care to preserve his own secrets. But so what? The US was not a police society, and hopefully never will be; if Venona is a testament to the success of the NKVD in the US, then it is also a testament to the resilience of democracy. It is a testament to the futility of secrecy and a powerful argument for greater governmental openness.
Great reference book, it even has a list of all US agents deciphered by Venona. The authors also make a very good use of the Russian archives, especially those of the Comintern, though their research in this area is a little dated and will hopefully be improved by other enthusiasts.
A Shocking Book, Perfectly Written, Desperately Needed.......2006-11-11
The subject of this book is a shocking fact of American history that, for reasons inconceivable, has been thoroughly neglected by the historical community for more than a decade. The secrets uncovered through the VENONA Project and presented here by Haynes -- all of them factual -- dramatically re-cast American Cold War history, so much so that any American, regardless of political orientation, should and will be shocked by the story Haynes tells.
"VENONA: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America" reveals that, all along, the intelligence community had incontrovertible proof of the Rosenbergs' guilt, and that Alger Hiss was unquestionably a Soviet spy. Countless others -- whose guilt has been debated for decades, or outright dismissed by nearly every serious historian as just one more "McCarthy-ite" lie -- were known from the very beginning to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, though the government withheld the proof to keep VENONA a secret.
This is the story of what was by far the most pervasive and disturbing infiltration of the United States government by hostile foreign elements in history. It is also the story of by far the most important counter-intelligence initiative the United States has ever undertaken. Both of these stories were forgotten and needed to be told. All Americans owe Haynes a debt of gratitude for what he has done here.
The truth of the book's claims have been established by the Moynihan Commission, and can be personally verified by any member of the public per the official declassification of VENONA in 1995.
A valuable and important contribution to the history of Soviet Cold War espionage.......2006-09-05
Spying is the everyday word for the fancier word espionage. The main thing is that we know every side does it. Everyone is trying to get an edge on knowing what the other is doing. So, why does it matter what the now defunct Soviet Union was doing in its spying efforts during World War II? Simply, it is because it still plays a part in our current political debate. Our super secret efforts in developing the atom bomb were compromised; this is certain. There is still debate how much of our diplomacy was compromised at the end of World War II, particularly at Yalta, by agents who were sympathetic to the USSR while having sworn loyalty to America and its Constitution.
During World War II, the United States was able to intercept encoded Soviet messages. They were supposed to be encoded in one time ciphers that were almost impossible to break in the age before super computers. Fortunately for America, the Soviets were sloppy are reused the cipher pads and better still, we were able to get our hands on a pad that was supposed to have been burned.
Much of the material was not decoded until after the war, but all of it was kept classified under the made up name Venona (as well as others). The program was ended in 1980 and the first public disclosures in 1995 (although there were books and articles on the program before that release of documents).
This book is an excellent summary of the program and what was learned from the program about key events that remained in the public debate for decades. Was Elizabeth Bently telling the truth about her spying? Yes. Was Whitakker Chamber telling the truth about Alger Hiss? Yes. Was Harry Dexter White, an assistant secretary of the Treasury and influential in the New Deal, working with the Soviets? Yes. Was Julius Rosenberg a spy? Yes. Was Ethel? Probably not more than an accessory to her husband's work.
There is much more in this very readable and informative work. Another book to read on this subject is "The Venona Secrets" by Rommerstein and Breindel. "The Haunted Wood" by Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev is also quite good.
A High Standard of Scholarship.......2006-03-21
In his book, A People's History of the United States, historian Howard Zinn described the Communist Party of the United States of America as a Party "known to pay special attention to the problem of race equality." Zinn said very little about communist espionage in the United States, and instead emphasized the roles of communist activists in the labor movement and the civil rights movement. Zinn is characteristic of leftist American historians who are quick to describe the Red Scare as an assault on civil liberties and ignore the very real threat posed by radical groups in the United States. Unfortunately for scholarship, their paradigm is regarded as mainstream.
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr have produced a scholarly work that forces the reader to rethink the notion of the American Marxist as a benign reformer. Decoding Soviet Espionage uses hard evidence gleaned from decoded past Soviet diplomatic traffic to expose the espionage of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Theodore Alvin Hall, Harry Dexter White, Armand Hammer, Lauchlan Currie and literally hundreds of others. Haynes and Klehr prove that the members of the CPUSA regularly stole technology and information from their employers: private industry and the Federal Government. Moreover, they had absolutely no moral qualms about doing this, since they regarded the Federal Government and private corporations as illegitimate, repressive organizations that would soon be replaced by a revolutionary utopia. Haynes' and Klehrs' thesis is convincing and compelling.
Although an anti-communist bias becomes quickly apparent, Haynes and Klehr manage to establish a neutral, scholarly tone throughout the book and avoid falling into a shrill ideological chorus. In fact, the book gets four stars because in some places the analysis drags, as though it was a raw data report.
Decoding Soviet Espionage should be required reading in any course about the Cold War era in U.S. History.
Spies and Lies.......2006-03-19
A well-researched book on an interesting subject. The findings of the Venona project shed new light on communism in America. It was fascinating to learn that communists in this country during the first half of the 20th century were doing more than just freely practicing their political and sociological beliefs - they were making serious and deliberate attempts to undermine our government, our defenses, and our technology. The detailed descriptions of espionage by communists in America, supported by factual evidence found in the Venona transcripts changed my perspective on this era of our country's history.
Average customer rating:
- The book to read Before Whittaker Chamber's
- Loneliness in the Spotlight--America's "Red Blond Spy Queen"
- History with intrique intact
- Bentley book based on shaky sources.
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Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley
Kathryn S. Olmsted
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Witness
ASIN: 0807827398
Release Date: 2002-09-11 |
Book Description
When Elizabeth Bentley slunk into an FBI field office in 1945, she was thinking only of saving herself from NKGB assassins who were hot on her trail. She had no idea that she was about to start the greatest Red Scare in U.S. history.
Bentley (1908-1963) was a Connecticut Yankee and Vassar graduate who spied for the Soviet Union for seven years. She met with dozens of highly placed American agents who worked for the Soviets, gathering their secrets and stuffing sensitive documents into her knitting bag. But her Soviet spymasters suspected her of disloyalty--and even began plotting to silence her forever. To save her own life, Bentley decided to betray her friends and comrades to the FBI. Her defection effectively shut down Soviet espionage in the United States for years.
Despite her crucial role in the cultural and political history of the early Cold War, Bentley has long been overlooked or underestimated by historians. Now, new documents from Russian and American archives make it possible to assess the veracity of her allegations. This long overdue biography rescues Elizabeth Bentley from obscurity and tells her dramatic life story.
Customer Reviews:
The book to read Before Whittaker Chamber's.......2004-07-01
Once the depression struck many elitist students (such as Miss Bentley at Vassar) seemed to begin to feel guilty of their privileged position in society. For those who had not religious grounding this opened up the possibility for other faiths to explain the crisis of history that they perceived themselves to be living through. Paul Johnson, in his book "The Quest for God" makes the point that people long for a faith to believe in and when conventional religion fails to satisfy they seek a substitute. Environmentalism, nuclear dis-armament, anti-globalism and other such "movements" attract such folk. For Elizabeth Bentley it was fascism, then communism, that served this purpose. She associated herself with the CPUSA (Communist Party of the USA) and through this met Jacob Golos, a soviet agent. With this individual she became romantically involved, even though Golos had a wife back in the USSR. Eventually Golos gets caught in a passport fraud scheme which effectively blows his anonymity vis-a-vis the FBI, forcing him to utilize his mistress Bentley as a front. So she gets involved and covers Golos before the onset of the Nazi-Soviet pact which leads the FBI to begin paying more attention to communists within the USA. In time Golos gets ill and Bentley progressively takes on more responsibility, including running an underground network of Americans who were spying for Soviet intelligence. I don't want to detail the whole book so I'll just conclude by saying why Bentley was significant and why you ought to read this slim book. Elizabeth Bentley testified later that all communists were potential spies for the USSR. Communism wasn't just an intellectual proclivity ala liberalism or conservatism. She was the one who detailed how the head of the CPUSA, for instance, took direction straight from Moscow. The party's rank and file, moreover, was similarly loyal to the USSR, she testified. She was, in other words, the missing link connecting the CPUSA with the USSR and soviet intelligence. The fascinating part of this great story (well told by the book's author) is that her most damning accusations of espionage couldn't be proved by the FBI, as her contacts were all tipped off soon after she came "in from the cold", so to speak, once she turned herself in to American authorities. She had her sceptics. It just was hard to believe what she claimed could be true; that many senior American officials could be passing intelligence to the USSR. The US Army began to break some coded cables of the Soviets beginning in 1948 which confirmed Miss Bentley's accusations, but the public wasn't privy to this development, of course. Miss Bentley, consequently, continued to be portrayed as a crackpot by many in government and especially in the media. The fortunate appearance of Whittaker Chambers on the public scene, making similar accusations as Bentley...but eventually providing some proof to back it up, in the end, saved the day....and Miss Bentley's reputation. These individuals thus proved the case that the USSR was trying to undermine the USA even while we were allied to one another during WW2; that Stalin was gearing up for a cold war years before liberals accused FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower of choosing hostility over cooperation with the USSR. Read this book before Witness by Whittaker Chambers for a great 1-2 punch against political naivete. Thanks for reading my opinion.
Loneliness in the Spotlight--America's "Red Blond Spy Queen".......2003-08-25
Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley
By Kathryn S. Olmsted
University of North Carolina Press, 2002
Reviewed by Kenneth R. Kahn
"Either the government attacks you or they put you on the payroll" Chris Warnock
The long trail of bread crumbs leading to American communists acting as Soviet agents inside the U.S. government and the beginnings of the red scare in the 1950s leads to one woman--Elizabeth Bentley.
Long before the revelations of the Venona cables, Elizabeth Bentley, variously described as a spinster, neurotic, alcoholic, sexual adventuress, communist spy and FBI informant, was transmitting secrets to the Soviet Union on everything imaginable.
Elizabeth Bentley, born of New England parents, was a historic anomaly, a footnote in the history of the cold war and American communism. She brought her American character and applied it to her dealings with both Soviet agents and fellow American communists. She was one of those figures whose lifestyle intertwined with her actions and how she is portrayed by history is a direct result of this interaction.
Bentley, having followed a long, tortured and circuitous route to the FBI's field office in New Haven, Connecticut in 1945, remade American politics and led to the exposure of the top communists in America.
One of the primary themes, and intriguing concepts behind this book, is that it exposes a heretofore, seemingly unimportant person in early cold war history. Bentleyýs life and roller coaster like adventures stand in stark contrast to her personal appearance. Deemed by the press, ýthe blond spy queený she hardly seems to me a seductress. She seems a plain, ordinary woman by today's standards. Yet, her appearance and demeanor were pivotal to her story as a Soviet agent.
Elizabeth told her story of communist espionage activity before various congressional committees and testified as a government witness in the Rosenberg case. She managed to talk "McCall's" magazine into serializing her autobiography titled, "Out of Bondage." At first, they were leery of the former communist turned FBI informant until they spoke to FBI P.R. man Lou Nichols who gave the Bureau's approval. Amongst the lies she purported to McCalls was her self-description characterized in the headline of the June 1951 installment, "I Joined the Red Underground with the Man I Loved." In the article, she described herself as an ingenuous "college girl" despite the fact she was thirty when she met him.
In the curious case of Elizabeth Bentley, where twists and turns are the norm, as a government witness, Bentley had access to the protection of the government. In a little-known incident, the 20th century's prime mover and fixer, the infamous, gay, red-baiting Roy Cohn, came to her assistance after a beating by her live-in lover, John Wright. According to Olmsted, documented by Nicholas Von Hoffman in his seminal work, "Citizen Cohn" and an FBI memorandum dated May 13, 1952 contained in the FBI's file on Gregory Silvermaster, 65-14603-4417, Cohn told the FBI that Bentley's beating was, "the most serious problem he had faced since coming into the United States Attorney's office." As a chief witness in the William Remington case, the beating could, "ruin her career as a lecturer" (FBI memorandum from Agent Cleveland to SAC Alan Belmont, May 8, 1952, Bentley file, 134-135, no. serial), and could, "endanger the Brothman and Rosenberg convictions." The author writes, "Cohn told Elizabeth to entice Wright to New York under false pretenses. When he arrived, he was hit with the full force of the U.S. government. FBI agents whisked him to a meeting with two prosecutors and Special Agent John Danahy. U.S. Attorney Myles Lane told Wright "to get out of Bentley's life or else." He left Bentley alone.
On May 29, 1952, Elizabeth appeared before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee investigating Owen Lattimore and the Institute of Pacific Relations. McCarthy accused Lattimore of being a "top Russian spy." The Institute of Pacific Relations was accused of front activities, particularly aiding and abetting the "fall" of China.
As the anti-communist spotlight faded, so did Elizabeth's fortunes. In her later life, she taught classes at a reform school, publishing the school newspaper and avoiding the public spotlight. On November 18, 1963, at the age of fifty-five, she entered Grace New Haven Community Hospital. She was officially diagnosed with abdominal cancer but actually suffered from chronic alcoholism from years of self-abuse.
"Red Spy Queen" is an interesting, sad, twisted tale of one woman's political journey from fascism to communism to anti-communism and the human toll of political activism. It is an excellent read, an important story of a sad footnote in the history of the early cold war and that uniquely American obsession---anti-communism.
History with intrique intact.......2002-12-30
I was amazed that this book would be such a delight to read. Initially, the historical research is well narrated, maintaining the suspense, danger, and the confusion behind the real life espionage of Elizabeth Bentley. Kathryn Olmsted displays an enjoyable interest in the vocabulary of the time, and is not shy to weave a moral into the story, as lasciviousness trumps cleverness. This book is a great resource on the fascinating history of the puzzle called the "Red Scare". As the Russians open their archives, the truth can be sought from a new light. Kathryn Olmsted pieces together Elizabeth Bentley's life, exaggerations, and manipulations in the sordid web of spies testifying against spies amidst political ambition and posturing of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Honestly, I couldnt put the book down.
Bentley book based on shaky sources........2002-11-13
This is a well written and informative book on Elizabeth Bentley and the ex-communist witnesses of the Red Scare period of the 1940s (and 1950s). Based on a rather narrow base of primary sources, while Olmsted appears to believe most of Bentley's fingering of communists, spies or otherwise, there is much still problematic in her story. She does not make the case that the "spies" posed any real threat to the security and stability of the country in the 1930s or during World War II, although some certainly existed and shared information, nuclear and otherwise, with the Soviety Union. Olmsted describes a most unstable woman, whose veracity is certainly questionable. And she underscores that spying ended with Bentley's public revelations at the end of World War II, long before the "McCarthy" Red Scare period of the early 1950s, as other historians have recently argued.
Book Description
In the Presence of Our Enemies has been meticulously researched, containing facts from years of Congressional investigations, as well as authoritative books written by historians and participants alike of the 20 Century''''s assault on the unique form of government fashioned through, as George Washington described, "a miracle at Philadelphia." To achieve this destruction and planned replacement with a socialist society amalgamated into a global government, it is first necessary to destroy traditional morality, a campaign conducted through every avenue of communication, with particular focus on textbooks and schools. Their legacy marches relentlessly onward. Meet the sociologists, the psychiatrists, the ''''educators,'''' moral degenerates, who banded together from countries around the world focusing on the redistribution of American wealth, and changing the culture which gave them birth. They gained entry into American Schools, colleges, legislative halls, and their descendants still promote a Fabian Socialist World Society supported by American taxes. Nothing has changed since Soviet leader Nikta Khrushchev in 1957, told us what was planned: "I can prophesy that your grandchildren in America will live under socialism...Your grandchildren will....not understand how their grandparents did not understand the progressive nature of socialist society...."
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VENONA; THE GREATEST SECRET OF THE COLD WAR.
Nigel. West
Manufacturer: Harper Collins
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ASIN: 0002570009 |
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This digital document is an article from First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, published by Institute on Religion and Public Life on May 1, 1999. The length of the article is 2112 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: VENONA: DECODING SOVIET ESPIONAGE IN AMERICA.(Review)
Author: Andrew J. Bacevich
Publication:
First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life (Refereed)
Date: May 1, 1999
Publisher: Institute on Religion and Public Life
Page: 53(1)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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- Thermopylae: The Battle for the West
- To Be a U.S. Army Green Beret (To Be A)
- To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13-25, 1864
- Urgent Fury: The Battle for Grenada (Issues in Low Intensity Conflict)
- Waffen-SS Encyclopedia
- War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It
- When the Wind Blows
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Stone Butterfly
- Gentle Warrior
- The Pneumococcus
- A Companion to Genethics
- Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture
- History: Fiction or Science
- Cop Hater
- Uniform Building Code Compliance Manual
- Whitemarsh Hall: The Estate of Edward T. Stotesbury
- Kosciusko Alpine Flora
Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11
The China Threat
Russian View of Us Strategy (Ppr)
Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cass Series--Studies in Intelligence)
