Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by Harvey Klehr;John Earl Haynes;Alexander Vassiliev
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Lowenthal's
curiosity? If not, claiming that someone had "looked through the archive
of the intelligence services" is nonsense. The files of the 193os-194os are
not indexed, and there must be hundreds of them on operations in the
United States alone. One can't go down to the archives and ask what
they've got because they don't know what they've got. I found some materials on Alger Hiss by researching the files for two years and by reading every page; I found them in different files for different years. Had
anyone done it before me? I don't think so.
As for the GRU archives, Serge Schmemann's report in the New York
Times of 17 December 1992 quoted Volkogonov as saying, "The Ministry of
Defense also has an intelligence service, which is totally different, and many
documents have been destroyed. I only looked through what the KGB had.
All I said was that I saw no evidence." Further the same report added, "General Volkogonov said he was `a bit taken aback' by the commotion his letter
caused. He acknowledged that his motive in writing the letter was 'primarily humanitarian,' to relieve the anguish of a man approaching death." The Washington Times of 25 November 1992 noted that in testimony before the
Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs "Gen. Volkogonov described the chaotic condition of files of the GRU." The paper also quoted
Volkogonov: "You must go through a number of documents page by page ...
literally hundreds of thousands of documents."
Another example on the same subject is the case of Julius Rosenberg.
For many years KGB colonel Alexander Feklisov, who had handled
Rosenberg in New York in the 1940s, unsuccessfully lobbied the service's
chiefs to admit that Rosenberg had cooperated with Soviet intelligence
and to acknowledge him as a hero. However, such an acknowledgment
would violate one of the basic principles of the Russian espionage agencies. Despite Feklisov's argument that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg would
have wanted it themselves, their participation in Soviet espionage in the
United States was not officially confirmed by the Russian side because
they died in the electric chair without confessing.
I had to find a way around this roadblock. I knew that it would be a
shock for the Declassification Commission to see the real names of American agents in my chapters, especially of those who had not confessed.
However, the final text for The Haunted Wood didn't have to be approved
by the commission, and Allen Weinstein could rewrite my chapters anyway. What I needed was the right to use quotations from the KGB documents. I tried to use mostly cover names in my own text when I wrote
my chapters. Since many cover names had been identified in the United
States, there would be no problem for Allen to understand who was who,
and if he had any difficulties, I would help him using Anatoly Gorsky's
list and my notebooks.
I could use the real names of Soviet operatives and people like Elizabeth
Bentley and Boris Morros. I presented Jacob Golos as an illegal station chief
rather than an agent (he was described both ways in the documents) to be
able to call him by his name. Writing about Laurence Duggan, I accentuated the fact that he had tried to break with the NKVD several times (that
chapter wasn't submitted to the commission anyway). I used Martha Dodd's
and Alfred Stern's real names because they went to live in the Soviet bloc
and by doing so admitted they had been connected to the Soviets. There was
no way to hide Martha from the Declassification Commission under her
cover name: the fact that she was the daughter of the U.S. ambassador to
Nazi Germany was too important for her story. And I couldn't do it with
Samuel Dickstein because I needed juicy quotes showing that "Crook" was
a member of the U.S. Congress.
As far as I know, there was a discussion in the Declassification Com mission about whether to release the chapter on Dickstein since his role
in Soviet espionage had
curiosity? If not, claiming that someone had "looked through the archive
of the intelligence services" is nonsense. The files of the 193os-194os are
not indexed, and there must be hundreds of them on operations in the
United States alone. One can't go down to the archives and ask what
they've got because they don't know what they've got. I found some materials on Alger Hiss by researching the files for two years and by reading every page; I found them in different files for different years. Had
anyone done it before me? I don't think so.
As for the GRU archives, Serge Schmemann's report in the New York
Times of 17 December 1992 quoted Volkogonov as saying, "The Ministry of
Defense also has an intelligence service, which is totally different, and many
documents have been destroyed. I only looked through what the KGB had.
All I said was that I saw no evidence." Further the same report added, "General Volkogonov said he was `a bit taken aback' by the commotion his letter
caused. He acknowledged that his motive in writing the letter was 'primarily humanitarian,' to relieve the anguish of a man approaching death." The Washington Times of 25 November 1992 noted that in testimony before the
Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs "Gen. Volkogonov described the chaotic condition of files of the GRU." The paper also quoted
Volkogonov: "You must go through a number of documents page by page ...
literally hundreds of thousands of documents."
Another example on the same subject is the case of Julius Rosenberg.
For many years KGB colonel Alexander Feklisov, who had handled
Rosenberg in New York in the 1940s, unsuccessfully lobbied the service's
chiefs to admit that Rosenberg had cooperated with Soviet intelligence
and to acknowledge him as a hero. However, such an acknowledgment
would violate one of the basic principles of the Russian espionage agencies. Despite Feklisov's argument that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg would
have wanted it themselves, their participation in Soviet espionage in the
United States was not officially confirmed by the Russian side because
they died in the electric chair without confessing.
I had to find a way around this roadblock. I knew that it would be a
shock for the Declassification Commission to see the real names of American agents in my chapters, especially of those who had not confessed.
However, the final text for The Haunted Wood didn't have to be approved
by the commission, and Allen Weinstein could rewrite my chapters anyway. What I needed was the right to use quotations from the KGB documents. I tried to use mostly cover names in my own text when I wrote
my chapters. Since many cover names had been identified in the United
States, there would be no problem for Allen to understand who was who,
and if he had any difficulties, I would help him using Anatoly Gorsky's
list and my notebooks.
I could use the real names of Soviet operatives and people like Elizabeth
Bentley and Boris Morros. I presented Jacob Golos as an illegal station chief
rather than an agent (he was described both ways in the documents) to be
able to call him by his name. Writing about Laurence Duggan, I accentuated the fact that he had tried to break with the NKVD several times (that
chapter wasn't submitted to the commission anyway). I used Martha Dodd's
and Alfred Stern's real names because they went to live in the Soviet bloc
and by doing so admitted they had been connected to the Soviets. There was
no way to hide Martha from the Declassification Commission under her
cover name: the fact that she was the daughter of the U.S. ambassador to
Nazi Germany was too important for her story. And I couldn't do it with
Samuel Dickstein because I needed juicy quotes showing that "Crook" was
a member of the U.S. Congress.
As far as I know, there was a discussion in the Declassification Com mission about whether to release the chapter on Dickstein since his role
in Soviet espionage had
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