Washington Decoded: June 2009

In Denial: Round 11

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By John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr

While we were writing Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, based on Alexander Vassiliev’s notebooks, we anticipated a hostile reaction from battered but still rancorous remnants of the pro-Communist left in the academic world and partisan pundits. Together they have denied for more than fifty years that Soviet espionage in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s had much significance, denounced claims linking the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) with Soviet espionage, and proclaimed the innocence of many of those identified as Soviet agents.

We expected the most antagonistic reaction would involve the traditionally two most contested cases: that of Alger Hiss, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. No one who studies 20th century American history can fail to be astounded by the quantity and the viciousness of the assaults leveled on scholars who dared question the innocence and martyrdom of Hiss and the Rosenbergs. Historians Allen Weinstein and Ronald Radosh, most notably, were subjected to years of attacks on their personal integrity and professional competence for their pioneering and superbly researched books on the Hiss-Chambers and Rosenberg cases.[1]

The opening chapter of Spies, entitled “Alger Hiss: Case Closed,” ended with our conclusion that in light of new and definitive evidence from the KGB archives recorded in Vassiliev’s notebooks, as well as the ample evidence available earlier from other sources, “to serious students of history continued claims for Hiss’s innocence are akin to a terminal form of ideological blindness.” But we also noted, “it is unlikely that anything will convince the remaining die-hards.”[2] Similarly, we foresaw continued protests of innocence from the ranks (albeit much-thinned ranks) of the Rosenberg defenders in the academy and elsewhere to the extensive documentation in Spies of the extraordinary size of the espionage apparatus Rosenberg established. Spies revealed for the first time, for example, that Rosenberg had recruited a second atomic spy, Russell McNutt, in addition to the his long-identified brother-in-law David Greenglass.

Somewhat to our surprise, however, the defenses of Hiss and the Rosenbergs, while not disappearing, have taken a back seat to the protection of I. F. Stone.

In the grand sweep of Spies, which tells the story of KGB activities and networks in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, Stone is a very minor player, with only a bit part. Most of the references to him are in passing, and the totality of his activities take up only six pages out of 548 pages of text. In contrast, Hiss has an entire chapter, thirty-one pages, devoted to his case, while the section on Julius Rosenberg and his extensive technical and atomic espionage apparatus is even longer. Indeed, numerous other Americans who assisted Soviet intelligence receive more attention in Spies than Stone simply because their roles were more important than his were.

Stone, however, is an icon in certain journalistic precincts, and to his devotees those six pages are the only ones in Spies that matter. Their responses match in distortion, whitewashing, spinning, and ad hominem viciousness any that we have received over the years and give us a better understanding of what Weinstein and Radosh had to put up with. The history of communism and Soviet espionage have never been fields for those seeking the scholarly quiet life, but the displays of rage (real and faux) in regard to Stone have been impressive.

“Izzy, We Hardly Knew Ye”

To be sure, we anticipated there would be considerable interest in our new material on Stone because the matter of his cooperation with Soviet intelligence had been murky, and Spies brought forward some significant new information. In a 1999 book, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, we had examined the evidence of WWII KGB cables deciphered by the National Security Agency’s Venona project about Soviet contacts with Stone and concluded that while the cables showed that the KGB hoped to establish a covert relationship “there is no evidence in Venona that Stone was ever recruited by the KGB.”[3] The Vassiliev notebooks, however, provided additional documentation, and in Spies we wrote that the evidence shows that Stone was recruited in 1936 to assist Soviet espionage in the United States and functioned into 1939 as a talent scout for new sources, a courier linking the KGB with sources, and a source in his own right for insider journalism information.

The notebooks also showed that sometime in 1939 Stone’s assistance to Soviet espionage ceased, although at whose initiative is unknown. Stalin’s purge of his own security services had forced Soviet intelligence to shut down most of its agent networks in America by that year and, in any event, Stone was so revolted by the Nazi-Soviet pact that he undoubtedly severed whatever relationship existed by that time. In late 1944 the KGB again approached Stone, hoping to reestablish a relationship, but the evidence was (and remains) ambiguous on whether that was successful.

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Tags: Alexander Vassiliev, Alger Hiss, Allen Weinstein, Don Guttenplan, Eduard Mark, Eric Alterman, Harvey Klehr, I. F. Stone, John Earl Haynes, Kai Bird, KGB, Ronald Radosh, Svetlana Chervonnaya, Venona, Victor Navasky

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In Denial: Round 11

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