Spies : The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America

by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev

• ISBN13: 9780300123906
• ISBN10: 0300123906
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2009-05-26
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

This stunning book, based on KGB archives that have never come to light before, provides the most complete account of Soviet espionage in America ever written. In 1993, former KGB officer Alexander Vassiliev was permitted unique access to Stalin-era records of Soviet intelligence operations against the United States. Years later, living in Britain, Vassiliev retrieved his extensive notebooks of transcribed documents from Moscow. With these notebooks John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr have meticulously constructed a new, sometimes shocking, historical account. Along with general insights into espionage tactics and the motives of Americans who spied for Stalin,Spiesresolves specific, long-seething controversies. The book confirms, among many other things, that Alger Hiss cooperated with Soviet intelligence over a long period of years, that journalist I. F. Stone worked on behalf of the KGB in the 1930s, and that Robert Oppenheimer was never recruited by Soviet intelligence.Spiesalso uncovers numerous American spies who were never even under suspicion and satisfyingly identifies the last unaccounted for American nuclear spies. Vassiliev tells the story of the notebooks and his own extraordinary life in a gripping introduction to the volume.

Author Biography

John Earl Haynes is a historian in the Manuscript Division, the Library of Congress. He lives in Kensington, MD. Harvey Klehr is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Politics and History, Emory University. He lives in Atlanta, GA. Haynes and Klehr are coauthors with Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov of The Secret World of American Communism, published by Yale University Press. Alexander Vassiliev, journalist and coauthor with Allen Weinstein of The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America, now lives in the UK.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xxi
Conventions for Nomenclature, Citations, Quotations, Cover Names, and Transliteration	p. xxiii
Introduction "How I Came to Write My Notebooks, Discover Alger Hiss, and Lose to His Lawyer	p. xxvii
Alger Hiss: Case Closed	p. 1
Enormous: The KGB Attack on the Anglo-American Atomic Project	p. 33
The Journalist Spies	p. 145
Infiltration of the U.S. Government	p. 195
Infiltration of the Office of Strategic Services	p. 293
The XY Line: Technical, Scientific, and Industrial Espionage	p. 331
American Couriers and Support Personnel	p. 393
Celebrities and Obsessions	p. 431
The KGB in America: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Structural Problems	p. 483
Conclusion	p. 541
Notes	p. 549
Index	p. 638
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