20th Century Political Historian (ret), Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Phone: 5059199421 Address: 227 Camino de la Sierra Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87501 United States
William Albertson, who was executive secretary of the New York Communist Party and a member of th... more William Albertson, who was executive secretary of the New York Communist Party and a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), was framed as an informant for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1964. Only in recent years have newly released FBI records enabled scholars to understand why the FBI undertook the operation and how much damage it did to the CPUSA. In 1964 two leaks from the FBI hinted that the bureau had a high-level informant in the CPUSA who was providing information about secret Soviet subsidies. The leaks were accurate and endangered one of the FBI's most successful intelligence operations, Operation Solo, which involved the use of two brothers, Morris Childs and Jack Childs, who were confidants of CPUSA General Secretary Gus Hall, as key informants. The framing of Albertson was intended to deflect CPUSA and Soviet attention from the real FBI informants to a bogus one. The ploy succeeded. The forged documents the FBI plante...
One of the intriguing unidentified cover names in the Venona decryptions released in the mid-1990... more One of the intriguing unidentified cover names in the Venona decryptions released in the mid-1990s was ‘19’, a Soviet source senior enough to report taking part in a conversation with President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and Vice-President Wallace at the 1943 Trident conference. While some historians thought the evidence too ambiguous to identify the real name behind ‘19’, others built a case that it was presidential adviser Harry Hopkins. Alexander Vassiliev's notebooks, made public in 2009, resolved the issue by firmly identifying ‘19’ as State Department official Laurence Duggan. There remain, however, writers who refuse to accept the evidence that ‘19’ was Duggan and insist that Hopkins was a Soviet agent on the basis of insubstantial evidence.
Alexander Vassiliev's notebooks with 1,115 pages of handwritten transcriptions, excerpts, and... more Alexander Vassiliev's notebooks with 1,115 pages of handwritten transcriptions, excerpts, and summaries from Soviet Committee on State Security (KGB) archival files provide the most detailed documentation available of Soviet espionage in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. This article discusses the provenance of the notebooks and how they fit with previously available Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files, KGB cables decrypted by the Venona project, Communist International records, court proceedings, and congressional investigations. As an example of the richness of the material, the essay reviews the notebooks' documentation of Soviet spy William Weisband's success in alerting the Soviet Union to the U.S. decryption project that tracked Soviet military logistic communications, allowing the USSR to implement a more secure encryption system and blinding the United States to preparations for the invasion of South Korea in 1950.
had belonged to the Communist party with him in the 1930s.1 Denounced as an informant, he went on... more had belonged to the Communist party with him in the 1930s.1 Denounced as an informant, he went on to make a movie that justified 'squealing'. A significant section of the Hollywood community never forgave him. When the Motion Picture Academy gave Kazan a lifetime achievement award in 1999, there were organized protests outside the awards ceremony and a substantial segment of the audience refused to applaud when Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro made the presentation to the infirm, 89-year-old Kazan, who died in 2003.2 Kazan's decision to name names, his subsequent defence of his actions and his refusal over the years to apologize for his actions have provoked intense controversy. Although On the Waterfront was commonly interpreted as Kazan's justification for his decision, some critics have insisted that informing on Communists and informing on mobsters are not comparable, and thus Kazan's rationale for his actions is unpersuasive. Whatever one's opinion of Kazan or his movie, it is an arguable point. A new book, however, goes beyond arguing about the moral validity of Kazan's actions by distorting nearly everything about On the Waterfront. Blacklisted: The Film Lover's Guide to the Hol-
T he spy trials of the late 1940s and early 1950s fo cused on the theft of sensitive government i... more T he spy trials of the late 1940s and early 1950s fo cused on the theft of sensitive government information. Top secret documents, atomic espionage, and military technology had been stolen. The accused had held important government positions with knowledge of internal U.S. policy deliberations or had access to highly sensitive technological and military secrets, and the public was transfixed by the trials and their aftermath. The spy cases of the latter half of the 1950s drew less attention. The defendants had little to do with stealing significant government secrets, although that was not for lack of trying and in part reflected successful American counterespionage. Instead, the spies in the last cases had chiefly participated in the Soviet Union's clandestine campaign to suppress or discredit exiled Russian dissidents and other ideological enemies of the USSR. In many cases their actions were not strictly illegal under American law of that day but several of those involved had the blood of dissident Russians on their hands. And like the Rosenberg case, the Soble-Soblen spy trials featured siblings turning on each other. Jack Soble, Robert Soblen, and their confederates were tried for espionage against the United States, but the history of their apparatus goes back to Europe and Joseph Stalin's rivalry with Leon Trotsky. A brilliant writer and Marxist theoretician, Trotsky became one of the Bolshevik heroes of the Russian Revolution by organizing the Red Army into an efficiently merciless military force and leading it to victory in the Russian Civil War.
William Albertson, who was executive secretary of the New York Communist Party and a member of th... more William Albertson, who was executive secretary of the New York Communist Party and a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), was framed as an informant for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1964. Only in recent years have newly released FBI records enabled scholars to understand why the FBI undertook the operation and how much damage it did to the CPUSA. In 1964 two leaks from the FBI hinted that the bureau had a high-level informant in the CPUSA who was providing information about secret Soviet subsidies. The leaks were accurate and endangered one of the FBI's most successful intelligence operations, Operation Solo, which involved the use of two brothers, Morris Childs and Jack Childs, who were confidants of CPUSA General Secretary Gus Hall, as key informants. The framing of Albertson was intended to deflect CPUSA and Soviet attention from the real FBI informants to a bogus one. The ploy succeeded. The forged documents the FBI plante...
One of the intriguing unidentified cover names in the Venona decryptions released in the mid-1990... more One of the intriguing unidentified cover names in the Venona decryptions released in the mid-1990s was ‘19’, a Soviet source senior enough to report taking part in a conversation with President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and Vice-President Wallace at the 1943 Trident conference. While some historians thought the evidence too ambiguous to identify the real name behind ‘19’, others built a case that it was presidential adviser Harry Hopkins. Alexander Vassiliev's notebooks, made public in 2009, resolved the issue by firmly identifying ‘19’ as State Department official Laurence Duggan. There remain, however, writers who refuse to accept the evidence that ‘19’ was Duggan and insist that Hopkins was a Soviet agent on the basis of insubstantial evidence.
Alexander Vassiliev's notebooks with 1,115 pages of handwritten transcriptions, excerpts, and... more Alexander Vassiliev's notebooks with 1,115 pages of handwritten transcriptions, excerpts, and summaries from Soviet Committee on State Security (KGB) archival files provide the most detailed documentation available of Soviet espionage in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. This article discusses the provenance of the notebooks and how they fit with previously available Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files, KGB cables decrypted by the Venona project, Communist International records, court proceedings, and congressional investigations. As an example of the richness of the material, the essay reviews the notebooks' documentation of Soviet spy William Weisband's success in alerting the Soviet Union to the U.S. decryption project that tracked Soviet military logistic communications, allowing the USSR to implement a more secure encryption system and blinding the United States to preparations for the invasion of South Korea in 1950.
had belonged to the Communist party with him in the 1930s.1 Denounced as an informant, he went on... more had belonged to the Communist party with him in the 1930s.1 Denounced as an informant, he went on to make a movie that justified 'squealing'. A significant section of the Hollywood community never forgave him. When the Motion Picture Academy gave Kazan a lifetime achievement award in 1999, there were organized protests outside the awards ceremony and a substantial segment of the audience refused to applaud when Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro made the presentation to the infirm, 89-year-old Kazan, who died in 2003.2 Kazan's decision to name names, his subsequent defence of his actions and his refusal over the years to apologize for his actions have provoked intense controversy. Although On the Waterfront was commonly interpreted as Kazan's justification for his decision, some critics have insisted that informing on Communists and informing on mobsters are not comparable, and thus Kazan's rationale for his actions is unpersuasive. Whatever one's opinion of Kazan or his movie, it is an arguable point. A new book, however, goes beyond arguing about the moral validity of Kazan's actions by distorting nearly everything about On the Waterfront. Blacklisted: The Film Lover's Guide to the Hol-
T he spy trials of the late 1940s and early 1950s fo cused on the theft of sensitive government i... more T he spy trials of the late 1940s and early 1950s fo cused on the theft of sensitive government information. Top secret documents, atomic espionage, and military technology had been stolen. The accused had held important government positions with knowledge of internal U.S. policy deliberations or had access to highly sensitive technological and military secrets, and the public was transfixed by the trials and their aftermath. The spy cases of the latter half of the 1950s drew less attention. The defendants had little to do with stealing significant government secrets, although that was not for lack of trying and in part reflected successful American counterespionage. Instead, the spies in the last cases had chiefly participated in the Soviet Union's clandestine campaign to suppress or discredit exiled Russian dissidents and other ideological enemies of the USSR. In many cases their actions were not strictly illegal under American law of that day but several of those involved had the blood of dissident Russians on their hands. And like the Rosenberg case, the Soble-Soblen spy trials featured siblings turning on each other. Jack Soble, Robert Soblen, and their confederates were tried for espionage against the United States, but the history of their apparatus goes back to Europe and Joseph Stalin's rivalry with Leon Trotsky. A brilliant writer and Marxist theoretician, Trotsky became one of the Bolshevik heroes of the Russian Revolution by organizing the Red Army into an efficiently merciless military force and leading it to victory in the Russian Civil War.
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