New Book Describes 50 Years of Russian Espionage

Ed Warner, Voice of America
February 7, 2001

Communism is gone, but the argument over Communist espionage in America, especially during World War II, continues with no end in sight. It is fueled by the release of a vast quantity of secret Soviet documents and the belated publication of a Soviet code known as Venona that was broken by U.S. analysts over 50 years ago.

A book has just been published based on these files, following two other volumes and a major article in the New York Times. These describe a network of Soviet spying that extended to the upper reaches of the U.S. Government and may have influenced policy at critical junctures.

In a former girls' school that had been taken over by the U.S. military during World War II, a group of young Americans skilled in math and languages quietly labored to unravel a secret Soviet code. Thanks in part to a lucky break, they finally succeeded, and a treasure trove of secret information poured out - all the communications between Moscow and its American agents up to 1946 when the Soviets learned of the operation. The 2,900 messages that were decoded are only a portion of those that were sent. But the secret messages have now been supplemented by millions of recently released documents from Soviet archives.

Herbert Romerstein, co-author with the late Eric Breindel of The Venona Secrets, describes what has become available. He said, "We now have the Venona documents, the intercepted NKVD, later KGB communications with their officers in the United States who ran these agents, and we have also had access to some of the Moscow archives. Some of those archives are now closed again, but some very valuable material was brought out of there, and we were able to compare that to the Venona intercepts and to files also in the former Communist countries, Czechoslovakia, Germany and so on. It gave us a very interesting picture of just how Soviet operations were conducted in the United States in those years."

Those operations have also been documented by two earlier books. One is titled The Haunted Wood, by Historian Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB agent. The other is called Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, by historians John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. These authors say the scope of Soviet espionage was so extensive that Stalin was in effect waging a covert war against the United States, at the same time he was engaged in open warfare with Germany.

Mr. Romerstein, a Communist in his youth and later an anti-Communist investigator for the U.S. Congress, says Moscow's large cadre of American agents was very useful. "These were the American Communists," he said, "who received their instructions from Moscow, who were totally dedicated to Moscow. As a result of this, the Soviets were able to get some of their people into very, very high positions in the U.S. Government to operate against the interests of the United States and for the interests of the Soviet Union."

Mr. Romerstein and the other authors say the files confirm many of the most spectacular allegations about Soviet espionage in the United States. Some of those allegations came from former Communists like Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers. The documents, say the authors, remove any lingering doubts about some celebrated cases.

They say the documents show that former State Department official Alger Hiss was clearly involved in Soviet espionage, though he denied it to his dying day. Also involved were top White House staffer Laughlin Currie, top Treasury official Harry Dexter White and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 for passing atomic secrets to Moscow.

Maurice Isserman, Professor of History at Hamilton College, says Venona provides a detailed roadmap of Soviet espionage, and it is only a beginning. There is more material in Moscow that no outside researcher has seen, like the archives of Soviet military intelligence, which recruited many Americans.

But Mr. Isserman cautions against making unfounded assumptions. The Romerstein book, for example says flatly that Harry Hopkins, President Roosevelt's closest aide, was a Soviet agent. Mr. Isserman says that allegation is not justified.

He says the Venona papers cut two ways. He said, "They do provide evidence for the guilt of people long suspected of involvement, such as the Rosenbergs and Hiss and Harry Dexter White. They also vindicate some people against whom unfounded allegations were made. For example, there is no evidence in Venona or in any other source that has turned up in the past few years that Robert Oppenheimer who was the director of the Manhattan Project {the development of the U.S. atomic bomb}, was involved in Soviet espionage efforts. So we learn about the guilt of some people. We learn about the innocence of others."

There is also the question of the influence Soviet spies had on U.S. policy. Debate on that subject will probably continue long after the dust has settled from the release of the latest documents.

Mr. Romerstein says Soviet spy and U.S. official Harry Dexter White was ordered by Moscow to do everything possible to start a war with Japan so that it would not be tempted to attack the Soviet Union which was then battling Hitler's Germany.

In response, Mr. White drew up a list of harsh demands on Japan that were eventually sent to Tokyo. Mr. Romerstein says they strengthened the war party, leading to the attack on Pearl Harbor. War would probably have come, adds Mr. Romerstein, but later the United States would have been better prepared.

Mr. White also authored the so-called Morganthau plan, which intended to dismantle all industries in Germany and turn it into a nation of farms. This would have made it easier for Stalin to move into Europe at the end of the war. Ultimately, the plan was rejected, says Mr. Romerstein, but talk of it stiffened German resistance and prolonged the war.

The fact that it was rejected, says Professor Isserman, shows there were clear limits to Mr. White's influence. The role of other agents, like Alger Hiss, should also not be exaggerated. "Alger Hiss attended the Yalta conference, but there is no evidence that Hiss actually carried that much weight in American councils or that Roosevelt could have come to any decisions other than the ones he did regarding such issues as Poland or China at Yalta, regardless of whatever Alger Hiss was whispering in his ear at the time."

Professor Isserman notes ironically, that by the time controversial U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy started making allegations about Communists in the government, there were hardly any left. He was too late to be of use, only to damage reputations and give rise to "McCarthyism."

That could have been avoided, say many analysts, if the U.S. Government had disclosed the Venona files at the time instead of waiting a bewildering half century. They would have set the record straight and prevented the controversy over Communism that convulsed the nation. They might also have prevented the execution of Ethel Rosenberg, who though implicated in her husband's espionage, may not have deserved the death sentence.

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