Book Reviews ment of a NATO-Russia Council in 2002. Kaplan’s analysis reminds us that nothing can be taken for granted. To be sure, the creation of NATO ended 150 years of Ameri- can disengagement from entangling alliances in Europe, yet memories of isolationism fueled continuing European anxieties about U.S. commitments. Collections of conference papers tend to be uneven in range and quality, and this volume is no exception. Nonetheless, overall it constitutes a searching and challenging birthday tribute that not only underscores the vigor of specialist research in the ªeld

but also makes a real contribution to our understanding of the alliance. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/5/2/117/700410/jcws.2003.5.2.117.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021

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Athan G. Theoharis, Chasing Spies: How the FBI Failed in Counterintelligence but Pro- moted the Politics of McCarthyism in the Cold War Years. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002. 307 pp. $27.50.

Reviewed by John Earl Haynes, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

The heart of this volume repeats the theme Athan Theoharis has pursued through numerous books and articles: In the name of internal security the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) oppressed innocent people and tram- pled on civil liberties in its eagerness to suppress criticism of the status quo. In particular, his earlier works depicted the FBI’s investigations of the American Communist Party (CPUSA) and other radicals as having lacked any legiti- mate basis. The bulk of Chasing Spies continues this theme, focusing on cases of the FBI’s use of warrantless wiretaps and buggings; warrantless, surrepti- tious entries to photograph evidence (“black-bag” jobs); close surveillance; in- formants inside the CPUSA; and cooperation with congressional committees investigating domestic Communism. Theoharis describes all of this in detail and in scandalized tones. Nevertheless, in light of the declassiªcation of the decrypted Venona materials and the documents that have emerged from Soviet archives, it is no longer possible to ignore Soviet espionage and the CPUSA’s role in it. Consequently, Theoharis sur- rounds his recapitulation of FBI investigatory abuses with a discussion of the new evi- dence. He writes that Venona and KGB records conªrm that leaders of the American Communist party had served either as couriers or had recruited individuals to steal U.S. secrets for the Soviet Union....Thefact that the Soviets spied on the . . . is in itself not a startling revelation. (p. 237) If one’s knowledge of Soviet espionage had been based on Theoharis’s earlier writings, the disclosure of CPUSA involvement would have been very “startling” indeed. He deprecated claims of signiªcant Soviet spying and CPUSA assistance, and he stead- fastly attacked the credibility of defectors from Soviet espionage such as Elizabeth

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Bentley, whose testimony has now been overwhelmingly vindicated. His glossing over of Soviet espionage was key to his criticism of the FBI’s internal security activities as unjustiªed. In Chasing Spies Theoharis concedes that there were spies, but he palliates spying for Josif Stalin: “American spies may have aimed to further Soviet interests and betray their own nation, but the effect of their actions compromised neither long-term nor immediate U.S. security interests” (p. 17). Theoharis’s assessment is not—and cannot

be—supported by documentation. To give an example, the network of American Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/5/2/117/700410/jcws.2003.5.2.117.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 sources who worked under just one of many Soviet intelligence ofªcers, Itskhak Akhmerov, delivered 2,766 reels of microªlm to Moscow from 1941 to 1945. The Leica cameras favored by Soviet intelligence typically held 36 frames. If each frame re- corded one page, Akhmerov’s sources, who constituted only a small fraction of the to- tal number of Soviet spies, provided more than 90,000 pages of material. Theoharis has not read that material (neither has anyone else) or the hundreds of thousands of pages from other networks. His conªdent assertion that this material “compromised neither long-term nor immediate U.S. security interests” is therefore baseless. Furthermore, Theoharis claims that Soviet spies not only did not harm U.S. in- terests, but actually helped: “the information about U.S. industrial productivity and military strength provided by the Silvermaster group—the numbers being over- whelming—might have deterred Soviet ofªcials from pursuing an aggressive negotiat- ing strategy” (pp. 16–17). We have only limited knowledge of the inºuence of espio- nage on Stalin’s foreign policy decisions. The notion that information from Soviet spies scared Stalin into moderation is at best highly speculative. To downplay Soviet espionage, Theoharis emphasizes that KGB and Venona records document...political intelligence operations: re- ports on the plans and objectives of Democratic and Republican ofªcials; operations directed against Communist political adversaries—Trotskyites, Russian Monarchists, Social Democrats, Russian Orthodox, prelates, and anti-Russian Polish Americans. (p. 236) Theoharis dismisses these Soviet political intelligence activities as “silly” (p. 16). In re- ality, Soviet intelligence organs, with the assistance of American Communists, reached into the United States to track exiled Russians, Poles, and Ukrainians, monitored Eastern Orthodox clergy for anti-Soviet sermons, inªltrated American Jewish organi- zations, kidnapped Soviet seamen who had jumped ship, and planted informers in the American Socialist Workers Party and bugged its headquarters. With the assistance of American Communists, the Soviet intelligence agencies also slipped an assassin into Leon Trotsky’s residence in Mexico, killed an American who was guarding Trotsky, and aided an attempt (unsuccessful) to free Trotsky’s murderer from prison. Although Theoharis makes light of these actions by the Soviet intelligence agents, he expresses alarm when discussing intelligence investigations undertaken by the FBI of the CPUSA and Communist-aligned exiles. Far from depicting those activities as “silly,” he relates them with “how dare they!” outrage. Although the CPUSA as an institution was in fact assisting Soviet espionage and several of the exiles were in fact Soviet espio-

118 Book Reviews nage sources, Theoharis is indignant when he describes the FBI’s pursuit of these spies. Theoharis also regards the admission that there was signiªcant Soviet espionage as a new reason to condemn the FBI insofar as it reveals the “FBI’s counterintelligence failure” (p. 9). The bureau, he complains, brought criminal charges against only a small fraction of the individuals identiªed as Soviet spies. He brieºy acknowledges the dilemma that the FBI faced between gathering evidence that could be used in criminal

trials (risking the continued loss of secrets while legally admissible evidence was being Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-pdf/5/2/117/700410/jcws.2003.5.2.117.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 gathered) and choosing to identify and neutralize a security breach (thereby ending the loss of secrets but often precluding criminal prosecution because the evidence was gathered in a manner that precluded its use in a criminal trial). The FBI chose the lat- ter; Theoharis insists on the former. After the defections of Bentley and , a Soviet military intelligence ofªcer, in 1945, the FBI belatedly turned its attention to Soviet espionage. The bu- reau’s wiretaps, black-bag jobs, and informants inside the CPUSA destroyed the Soviet espionage system that had been established in the 1930s and that produced a cornuco- pia of intelligence during World War II. The system had relied on the CPUSA as an auxiliary and had mainly involved ideologically motivated sources. Hence it could not survive Truman’s vetting of government employees for Communist links and the gov- ernment’s full-scale assault against the CPUSA itself. By the late 1940s Soviet espio- nage had to be reconstructed on a different basis. The CPUSA was kept at an arm’s distance, as money, personal grievances, and blackmail largely replaced ideological re- cruitment. If Theoharis had had his way, the FBI would have restricted itself to traditional criminal investigation techniques rather than clandestine operations to break up espi- onage rings. Possibly that would have resulted in a few more cases that could have been tried, but almost certainly it would have allowed Soviet intelligence and the CPUSA to carry on espionage as they had in the 1930s and early 1940s, to the obvi- ous detriment of American security.

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Sir Curtis Keeble, Britain, the Soviet Union and Russia. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. 396 pp. $75.00.

Reviewed by Francis Wyman, Boston College

For those looking for a survey of British-Soviet-Russian relations in the twentieth cen- tury, Britain, the Soviet Union, and Russia, by former diplomat Sir Curtis Keeble, is a good place to start. The ªrst edition of the book, Britain and the Soviet Union, 1917–89, was written more than ten years ago to provide an overview of the policies of successive British governments toward the Soviet Union. Keeble, who served as British ambassador to the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, argued that ’s rise to power had given the West a historic opportunity to dismantle the

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