Spies
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The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America
John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev
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An unprecedented exposé of Soviet espionage in the United States during the 1930s and 40s
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, Spies resolves 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. Spies also 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.
"So outstandingly authoritative and convincing is this material that it will take an honored place alongside the basic sources on Soviet espionage in the United States. Here, the heart of the KGB is laid out as never before."—Tennent Bagley, author of Spy Wars
"Using now available Soviet sources, this valuable book tells the sobering and frightening story of the extent to which ideology will blind clever people and lead them to betray their country, democracy and freedom."—Paul Johnson, author of A History of the American People
"[Spies] shows how the Soviets went about the business of spying, its failures and successes, and, most interestingly, the names of the Americans from whom the KGB received information."—Alex Kingsbury, US News & World Report
“This magisterial book transcends the old debates and paradigms, and provides the most complete and thorough account of what Soviet espionage agents actually did in the United States.”--Ronald Radosh, The Weekly Standard
“This book is part of an internal cultural/intellectual war within the USA about how to interpret the early years of the Cold War. To this reviewer at least, its case is thoroughly convincing.”—Philip Boobbyer, Slavonic and East European Review Vol.89 No.2
Publication Date: May 26, 2009
