Stalin's American Spies

There is an old saying that truth is often stranger than fiction. Works of non-fiction can often prove that to be the case, revealing sometimes hidden or forgotten stories from our history. The Cold War, that epic conflict of ideologies fought largely in the shadows and still influencing the world we live in today, is just such an example. While so many great fictional spy stories were inspired by it ranging from Ian Fleming's James Bond novels to John le Carré's George Smiley, the real world of Cold War espionage can be just as fascinating as any thriller. The non-fiction work The Haunted Wood proves that to be the case with its exploration of the Americans who spied for the Russians in the 1930s and 1940s.

Written by historian Allen Weinstein and former KGB agent turned journalist Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood was written following a brief opening up of former Soviet archives and the declassification of the American Venona project to decipher Soviet messages sent during the 1940s. It was the twin opening of Cold War archives that allowed for a look into the truth behind cases that were both well known, suspected, and indeed complete surprises. Weinstein and Vassiliev certainly present all three in the course of the book as it covers the lives and spying careers of various American agents of the Soviets.

Part of what makes the book compelling is the people it reveals. There are familiar names in its pages including Alger Hiss, Whitaker Chambers, Klaus Fuchs, Donald Maclean, and Kim Philby that those familiar with the period will recognize. Many of them make what could be considered the historical equivalent of cameo appearances in the book, filling in pieces of some of the other, perhaps lesser known stories. Or else filling in pieces of their own stories that had been suspected but not known for certain.

It's the lesser known stories that are among the book's high-points. There's Martha Dodd, daughter of the American ambassador to Nazi Germany (whose own story featured in Erik Larson's bestseller In the Garden of Beasts), which a cache of lovers including members of the Nazi government and a Soviet intelligence agent before marrying a millionaire whom she drew into her espionage. Another of the fascinating tales to come out of the book is that of Samuel Dickstein, a New York Congressman and judge, who for a time became the Soviets proverbial “man on the hill” and known by his well-earned codename “Crook.” There are committed communists such as Ted Hall, a young man working on the Manhattan Project who helped give key information on the atomic bomb and whom effectively got away with a crime that the Rosenberg's were executed for. Another example is Elizabeth Berkley, an American who became known for a time as “the Red spy queen,” whose shifting allegiances helped end this golden age of Soviet espionage in America. The book is packed full of these tales and others like them, backed up by footnotes and documentation, that reveals an incredible story.

That story is that the true extent of Soviet penetration was virtually unknown at the time and even in the decades that initially followed. That was despite defections to the FBI, decrypts, spy trials, Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare that followed in his wake during in the 1950s. Indeed, McCarthy's specter hangs over the entire book but it's clear that what McCarthy preached about wasn't quite the case. There were spies, some in key locations to be sure, who helped the Soviet Union considerably in a brief period of time the book depicts. McCarthy though arrived too late, too loudly, and with too little factual information to have much real effect as things had been curtailed before he had ever come on the scene. Indeed, the Wisconsin senator's greatest legacy regarding this issue was to turn into a matter of partisan politics that (as the attempts at redeeming McCarthy's reputation by the likes of Anne Coulter, Glenn Beck, and Diane West show) continues to this day. One of the real accomplishments of The Haunted Wood is to separate the facts from the political hysteria to get at the heart of the matter, the fact behind the myths, and the people behind it all.

In fact, the book reveals the failures of Soviet intelligence with their American agents. For all their successes in penetrating different levels of the American government thanks to a combination of Communist sympathizers and spies-for-hire like Congressman Dickstein, there was so much more they could have accomplished. This is especially evident from the chapter on the congressman and one particularly intriguing memo presented in the book for the first time that makes for remarkable reading even now in the light of ongoing events. Yet the heads of the Soviet spy stations and those tasked with running the agents found themselves caught up in the political turmoil of Stalin's purges, left instead to be overworked and struggling against the ever-changing dictates of their masters in Moscow. The book reveals that despite some agents like Ted Hall and the mysterious British agent known only as “Eric” effectively getting away with what they'd done, many others were left to their sad fates and wondering if what they had been done had been worthwhile.

For all these reasons, The Haunted Wood is a most remarkable work. It is a non-fiction book without a doubt and perhaps a bit on the dry side for some but the story it has to tell is a remarkable one. It is full of incredible characters and intrigue, close calls, betrayals and everything one expects from a classic spy thriller of the Cold War. Yet as the book shows, the story of Stalin's American spies could be far stranger than anything a writer could have dreamed of.