[CTRL] American Reds Gave Away Store
-Caveat Lector- Published in Washington, D.C.Vol. 15, No. 5 -- February 8, 1999 www.insightmag.com American Reds Gave Away Store By Stephen Goode Red documents confirm members of the American Communist Party, as well as highly placed federal employees, took an active part in spying on the U.S. for the USSR. If you had asked almost any liberal American not so long ago about Soviet spies in the United States, like clockwork they would have responded with two major errors, despite considerable evidence to the contrary. First, they would have assured you that the American Communist Party -- officially called Communist Party U.S.A. -- was made up of idealistic do-gooder types who never for a moment spied for the Soviet Union or at any time offered any kind of a threat to the United States. Second, you similarly would have been assured that there were no serious Communists, or at least none of any significance, who spied for Moscow in any government agency or among the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project and at Los Alamos in the development of the atomic bomb. You would have been told that Sen. Joseph McCarthy was badly misinformed. You would have been told, too, that Alger Hiss was innocent, the victim of an ambitious congressman (Richard Nixon) and that the whole effort to uncover nonexistent Communists in Washington had been launched by conservative Republicans eager to undo the achievements of the New Deal and the liberal Roosevelt years. These widely believed errors were dealt a severe blow two decades ago when Allen Weinstein published his Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, the book that definitively proved that Hiss was a Soviet agent. Support for these misconceptions further eroded when Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes in 1995 published The Secret World of American Communism, a collection of documents they stumbled across in the Soviet Union, followed in 1998 by a second document collection. Now comes a third source that should undermine forever (but won't) belief in the innocence of the American Communist Party and the absence of serious Soviet spies in Washington and elsewhere in America. The Haunted Wood by Weinstein and former KGB agent Alexander Vassiliev covers what the two authors call "Soviet espionage's golden age" in the United States. Those were the years between 1933, when the United States initiated diplomatic relations with the USSR, broken after the Bolshevik Revolution, and 1945, the year when American Soviet agent in Washington Elizabeth Bentley broke with her Soviet connections, named names to the FBI and threw Soviet espionage in this country into a tailspin from which it never fully recovered. Thanks to a 1993 agreement between the American publisher Random House and the Association of Retired Intelligence Officers -- an organization of former KGB agents --Weinstein and Vassiliev had access for a two-year period to KGB Stalin-era archives, access the association offered in exchange for payments from Random House. For the first time outsiders were allowed to read the reports filed from the United States by Soviet agents operative in America -- and by Americans who worked for the Soviet Union, turning over secret documents and reports to officials of a nation not technically an enemy at the time. Nonetheless, it was a foreign power and the home of a social and economic ideology deeply opposed to American ways and traditions and a country whose leaders had made very clear that they regarded the triumph of communism worldwide as an inevitability. Weinstein describes The Haunted Wood to Insight as "The Canterbury Tales of Soviet espionage because there are a lot of extraordinary stories that go well beyond what we knew before we started this book": how the Americans came to spy for the Soviet Union, for example; their personal idiosyncrasies; their sex lives; the day-to-day problems of spycraft. The authors take their title from W.S. Auden's poem, "September 1, 1939," in which the great poet described Europeans on the day when Nazi Germany launched its invasion of Poland and began World War II as "Lost in a haunted wood/Children afraid of the night/Who have never been happy or good." Weinstein calls the book "nonjudgmental history" -- it's more the kind of book that could be described as "here's what we can tell happened from their files. There's nothing shrill about it. It is the record of what went on," he says. And a whole lot did go on. Weinstein and Vassiliev write that due to the often very dedicated work of the American spies -- who were, it cannot be overemphasized, betraying their own country -- "Russian intelligence agencies received substantial and sometimes critical information (including many classified documents) concerning U.S. government policies on highly sensitive subjects, its confidential negotiating strategies and secret weapons developments, including essential processes involved in building the atomic bomb." Some of the Soviet Union's U.S.
Re: [CTRL] American Reds Gave Away Store
-Caveat Lector- The USA CREATED the USSR starting with Bronstein/Trotsky from New York in 1917 setting out with his troop to take over the Red Army. The USA ran USSR as a subsidiary until ca. 1990 when it decided to put a end to this tyranny and create another. Comprende? I keep telling you the USA stands for neither PRINCIPLE (as in a principled CONSTITUTION) nor democracy. FWP. On Fri, 22 Jan 1999, Mike Moxley wrote: -Caveat Lector- Published in Washington, D.C.Vol. 15, No. 5 -- February 8, 1999 www.insightmag.com American Reds Gave Away Store By Stephen Goode Red documents confirm members of the American Communist Party, as well as highly placed federal employees, took an active part in spying on the U.S. for the USSR. If you had asked almost any liberal American not so long ago about Soviet spies in the United States, like clockwork they would have responded with two major errors, despite considerable evidence to the contrary. First, they would have assured you that the American Communist Party -- officially called Communist Party U.S.A. -- was made up of idealistic do-gooder types who never for a moment spied for the Soviet Union or at any time offered any kind of a threat to the United States. Second, you similarly would have been assured that there were no serious Communists, or at least none of any significance, who spied for Moscow in any government agency or among the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project and at Los Alamos in the development of the atomic bomb. You would have been told that Sen. Joseph McCarthy was badly misinformed. You would have been told, too, that Alger Hiss was innocent, the victim of an ambitious congressman (Richard Nixon) and that the whole effort to uncover nonexistent Communists in Washington had been launched by conservative Republicans eager to undo the achievements of the New Deal and the liberal Roosevelt years. These widely believed errors were dealt a severe blow two decades ago when Allen Weinstein published his Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, the book that definitively proved that Hiss was a Soviet agent. Support for these misconceptions further eroded when Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes in 1995 published The Secret World of American Communism, a collection of documents they stumbled across in the Soviet Union, followed in 1998 by a second document collection. Now comes a third source that should undermine forever (but won't) belief in the innocence of the American Communist Party and the absence of serious Soviet spies in Washington and elsewhere in America. The Haunted Wood by Weinstein and former KGB agent Alexander Vassiliev covers what the two authors call "Soviet espionage's golden age" in the United States. Those were the years between 1933, when the United States initiated diplomatic relations with the USSR, broken after the Bolshevik Revolution, and 1945, the year when American Soviet agent in Washington Elizabeth Bentley broke with her Soviet connections, named names to the FBI and threw Soviet espionage in this country into a tailspin from which it never fully recovered. Thanks to a 1993 agreement between the American publisher Random House and the Association of Retired Intelligence Officers -- an organization of former KGB agents --Weinstein and Vassiliev had access for a two-year period to KGB Stalin-era archives, access the association offered in exchange for payments from Random House. For the first time outsiders were allowed to read the reports filed from the United States by Soviet agents operative in America -- and by Americans who worked for the Soviet Union, turning over secret documents and reports to officials of a nation not technically an enemy at the time. Nonetheless, it was a foreign power and the home of a social and economic ideology deeply opposed to American ways and traditions and a country whose leaders had made very clear that they regarded the triumph of communism worldwide as an inevitability. Weinstein describes The Haunted Wood to Insight as "The Canterbury Tales of Soviet espionage because there are a lot of extraordinary stories that go well beyond what we knew before we started this book": how the Americans came to spy for the Soviet Union, for example; their personal idiosyncrasies; their sex lives; the day-to-day problems of spycraft. The authors take their title from W.S. Auden's poem, "September 1, 1939," in which the great poet described Europeans on the day when Nazi Germany launched its invasion of Poland and began World War II as "Lost in a haunted wood/Children afraid of the night/Who have never been happy or good." Weinstein calls the book "nonjudgmental history" -- it's more the kind of book that could be described as "here's what we can tell happened from their files. There's nothing shrill about it. It is the record of what went on," he says. And a whole lot did go on. Weinstein and Vassiliev write that
Re: [CTRL] American Reds Gave Away Store
-Caveat Lector- In a message dated 1/22/99 12:13:59 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: First, they would have assured you that the American Communist Party -- officially called Communist Party U.S.A. -- was made up of idealistic do-gooder types who never for a moment spied for the Soviet Union or at any time offered any kind of a threat to the United States. Second, you similarly would have been assured that there were no serious Communists, or at least none of any significance, who spied for Moscow in any government agency or among the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project and at Los Alamos in the development of the atomic bomb. You would have been told that Sen. Joseph McCarthy was badly misinformed. You would have been told, too, that Alger Hiss was innocent, the victim of an ambitious congressman (Richard Nixon) and that the whole effort to uncover nonexistent Communists in Washington had been launched by conservative Republicans eager to undo the achievements of the New Deal and the liberal Roosevelt years. I didn't see anything in the text to implicate the American Communist Party here (other than support of Wallace). That wasn't exactly espionage. As for the others, there is every evidence that they did what they did for money or excitement. I doubt there was a political idealist among them. Maybe the rest of the book will clear the issue. Prudy DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substancenot soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
