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Early Cold War Spies: The Espionage Trials that Shaped American Politics (Cambridge Essential Histories) |
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Early Cold War Spies: The Espionage Trials that Shaped American Politics (Cambridge Essential Histories)
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by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr
Sales Rank: 326134
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$1.98
At Amazon
on 6-17-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 264 pages
Published by: Cambridge University PressEdition: 1st Edition August 28, 2006
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0521674077
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0521674072
Book Dimensions:
8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
Weighs: 12.8 ounces
Product Review
"Haynes and Klehr offer valuable insights into how these public trials revealed the difficulties American authorities had in prosecuting spies within the legal limitations imposed by a democratic system based on the rule of law and the protection of civil liberties. How these Soviet spies were, for the most part, caught and convicted through our judicial processes is an enthralling story."
-Library Journal (starred review)
"This is another must-read from Haynes and KlehrEarly Cold War Spies pours a sound foundation and builds relentlessly through the Amerasia and Gouzenko cases right on through the list: the testimony of Elizabeth Bentley; the trials of Alger Hiss, Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, the Rosenbergs, Rudolf Abel, Morris Cohen and Morten Sobel; and the investigations of Robert Oppenheimer and Borris Morros."
-Metro Magazine
"a succinct, analytical volume with a point of view Highly recommended."
-Choice
Product Description
Communism was never a popular ideology in America, but the vehemence of American anticommunism varied from passive disdain in the 1920s to fervent hostility in the early years of the Cold War. Nothing so stimulated the white hot anticommunism of the late 1940s and 1950s more than a series of spy trials that revealed that American Communists had co-operated with Soviet espionage against the United States and had assisted in stealing the technical secrets of the atomic bomb as well as penetrating the U.S. State Department, the Treasury Department, and the White House itself. This book reviews the major spy cases of the early Cold War (Hiss-Chambers, Rosenberg, Bentley, Gouzenko, Coplon, Amerasia and others) and the often-frustrating clashes between the exacting rules of the American criminal justice system and the requirements of effective counter-espionage.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Early Cold War Spies: The Espionage Trials that Shaped American Politics (Cambridge Essential Histories) (Hardcover)
This reference work belongs on your bookshelf. Short and factual while heavily documented, in effect a college-level history primer, it recounts and places in context the major espionage trials of the 1940s and 1950s. It is now estimated there were several hundred Soviet spies in the United States, pilfering government, industrial or military secrets, and occasionally rising high enough in government to influence policy. Few were successfully prosecuted because counterespionage needs often worked at cross purposes with criminal trials' public disclosure. Cases often hinged on evidence gained from bugs and wiretaps placed without court order, which the FBI could do, and which served counterspy investigations, but which could not be introduced into court. The relatively few convictions have allowed the left to claim over the years that it was all a drummed-up scare over a non-existent problem. This book conclusively proves otherwise. The authors put these cases - Elizabeth Bentley, Hiss-Chambers, the Rosenbergs and numerous others - into historical and sequential context, including the shifting politics of wartime and postwar and changing criminal laws in areas like wiretapping. They also apply the conclusive evidence emerging publicly only decades later when records were declassified here and abroad. The authors' fairness is exemplified by their treatment of Manhattan Project research director J. Robert Oppenheimer. Wiretaps showed he wasn't guilty of spying, but aroused government security suspicions both because of his close Communist associations - including his wife and brother - as well as his reticence to investigators once Soviet spying attempts came to light. His shifting stories over the years (mostly to protect his brother, Manhattan Project leader General Leslie Groves concluded) led many to doubt his judgment and suitability, while not necessarily his loyalty. They also do a great job reconstituting the "Who Lost China?" debate. American Communists in the Treasury Department planted a Chinese Communist agent in Chiang's government, who managed to delay gold transfers to Chiang's government for two or three years. Chinese currency became worthless and public opinion tilted to Mao. Haynes and Klehr conclude that the problem ended by the 1960s, for various reasons, with the decline of the ideologically motivated spy. Latter-day traitors like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanson did it for money. But the earlier period should be one of great concern for those today who maintain that their opposition to U.S. interests and support for those of foreign enemies should in no way generate questions about their loyalty. Because in the 1930s and 1940s, left ranks were pervaded by traitors. Liberals need to get over their continuing denial.
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Early Cold War Spies: The Espionage Trials that Shaped American Politics (Cambridge Essential Histories)
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Price: $1.98
Updated on 6-17-2008.
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