Tseng 2003.10.24 14:06 6655 Olmsted / RED SPY QUEEN / sheet 1 of 284 QUEEN RED SPY Tseng 2003.10.24 14:06 6655 Olmsted / RED SPY QUEEN / sheet 2 of 284 3 of 284 6655 Olmsted / RED SPY QUEEN / sheet RED SPY QUEEN A Biography of ELIZABETH BENTLEY Kathryn S.Olmsted The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill and London Tseng 2003.10.24 14:06 4 of 284 © 2002 6655 Olmsted / RED SPY QUEEN / sheet The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved Set in Charter, Champion, and Justlefthand types by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Olmsted, Kathryn S. Red spy queen : a biography of Elizabeth Bentley / by Kathryn S. Olmsted. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8078-2739-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Bentley, Elizabeth. 2. Women communists—United States—Biography. 3. Communism—United States— 1917– 4. Intelligence service—Soviet Union. 5. Espionage—Soviet Union. 6. Informers—United States—Biography. I. Title. hx84.b384 o45 2002 327.1247073'092—dc21 2002002824 0605040302 54321 Tseng 2003.10.24 14:06 5 of 284 To 6655 Olmsted / RED SPY QUEEN / sheet my mother, Joane, and the memory of my father, Alvin Olmsted Tseng 2003.10.24 14:06 Tseng 2003.10.24 14:06 6655 Olmsted / RED SPY QUEEN / sheet 6 of 284 7 of 284 Contents Preface ix 6655 Olmsted / RED SPY QUEEN / sheet Acknowledgments xiii Chapter 1. The Sad and Lonely Girl 1 Chapter 2. Vitally Important Work 20 Chapter 3. Clever Girl 36 Chapter 4. A Serious and Dangerous Burden 57 Chapter 5. Get Rid of Her 89 Chapter 6. The Blonde Spy Queen 114 Chapter 7. False Witness 140 Chapter 8. Somewhat Hysterical 172 Epilogue 202 Notes 205 Selected Bibliography 245 Index 257 A section of illustrations follows page 80. Tseng 2003.10.24 14:06 Tseng 2003.10.24 14:06 6655 Olmsted / RED SPY QUEEN / sheet 8 of 284 9 of 284 Preface On an unseasonably chilly day in August 1945, a Connecticut Yan- 6655 Olmsted / RED SPY QUEEN / sheet kee named Elizabeth Bentley stole into an industrial building in New Haven that housed a field office of the Federal Bureau of In- vestigation. Looking anxiously over her shoulder for tails, she rode the elevator to a top floor, then slunk down the stairs. She took a deep breath and entered the small government office. Just two weeks earlier, the Second World War—and the grand alliance be- tween the United States and the Soviet Union—had come to an end. Bentley was now thinking of ending her own, illegal alliance with Soviet intelligence. When she finally began to tell her tale to the fbi, Bentley would name more than fifty Americans who she said had helped her spy for the Soviets. She would describe and identify the most power- ful Soviet spymasters in the United States, as well as the Ameri- can government officials who served as their agents. Her defection would effectively shut down Soviet espionage in the United States foraperiodofyears. She would also help trigger an earthquake in American poli- tics. The Alger Hiss case, the Smith Act prosecutions of Communist Party leaders, and Senator Joe McCarthy’s denunciations of State Department Reds all stemmed from Bentley’s decision to walk into that forbidding fbi office. Her allegations seemed to provide hard evidence that the Soviets had undermined the American govern- ment—that there was, in McCarthy’s words, a ‘‘conspiracy so im- mense’’ to destroy the United States from within. Despite her importance, Bentley has been neglected by histori- ans.1 In part, this neglect has been due to the difficulty of assessing her truthfulness. Now, though, new documents coming out of Rus- Tseng 2003.10.24 14:06 10 of 284 sian and American archives make it possible to verify the broad outlines of her story—and to disprove some of her exaggerations. Bentley has also been overlooked because many observers re- garded her as a pathetic or even laughable figure. Walter Good- man, for example, condescendingly described her as ‘‘the hero- ine of all the bad novels she had ever read,’’ while Robert Carr, in a stunning underestimation of her abilities, called her a ‘‘sadly confused idealist who was used by persons shrewder and clev- erer than herself.’’2 A large-boned, self-confident brunette with a 6655 Olmsted / RED SPY QUEEN / sheet sharp nose and receding chin, she was called a spy queen, an old biddy, a beautiful young blonde, and a neurotic old maid. Her critics spread rumors of her promiscuity, her abortions, her bi- sexual tendencies, and her alcoholism. She was, as her onetime boyfriend and fellow witness Harvey Matusow says, ‘‘probably at- tacked more than the other witnesses of the period.’’3 She seemed somehow unworthy of the type of serious historical analysis ap- plied to intellectual, male defectors like Whittaker Chambers. But Bentley’s ‘‘spy queen’’ image makes her more, rather than less, historically interesting. There was something about her that touched the fears and fantasies of postwar Americans. Her media image revealed Americans’ concerns about gender relations after the upheaval of the war. Her story became interwoven with the cultural, as well as the political, history of the Cold War at home. Finally, some critics have viewed Bentley as a relatively unim- portant puppet of the political right. She did, indeed, serve the interests of the right. But she was never anyone’s dummy. She be- came J. Edgar Hoover’s top informant—and also his chief head- ache. She helped to create the spy scare, then threatened to dis- credit it with her own wild allegations and personal indiscretions. The fbi always had to balance its desire to promote her conserva- tive political message with its distaste for her liberal standards of personal behavior. Once, an angry witness denounced Elizabeth to the bureau as a lying slut. The fbi agents responded that ‘‘they knew she was a ‘slut,’ but that she could be telling the truth about other things.’’4 At times, she did tell the truth; at other times, she was a lying, {x} preface Tseng 2003.10.24 14:06 11 of 284 manipulative opportunist. Throughout her life, she was a bundle of contradictions. She was an alcoholic daughter of a temperance crusader; a fan, at different times, of Mussolini, Stalin, the pope, and J. Edgar Hoover; a shrewd woman who outsmarted the nkgb and the fbi but who chose boyfriends who abused her. She was, as one fbi agent who knew her says, ‘‘a highly intelligent woman with a very unfortunate life.’’5 Above all, she was an intensely lonely woman searching for love and acceptance. Ordinarily, such a personal quest would not be 6655 Olmsted / RED SPY QUEEN / sheet historically significant. But Elizabeth Bentley’s particular search led her to betray her country, betray her friends, and initiate one of the most destructive episodes in U.S. political history. preface {xi} Tseng 2003.10.24 14:06 Tseng 2003.10.24 14:06 6655 Olmsted / RED SPY QUEEN / sheet 12 of 284 13 of 284 Acknowledgments Many people helped to make this book possible. Among the nu- 6655 Olmsted / RED SPY QUEEN / sheet merous archivists who assisted me in finding obscure documents, I especially appreciate the efforts of Valerie Browne at Loyola Uni- versity of Chicago; Joy Eldridge at the University of Sussex; Janie Morris at the Perkins Library at Duke University; Carol Leaden- ham at the Hoover Institution; David Haight at the Eisenhower Li- brary; Richard Gelbke and Greg Plunges at the National Archives in New York; and Fred Romanski at the National Archives in Mary- land. Krystyna von Henneberg, Paula Findlen, and Anne Bressler all helped me in the difficult task of finding research assistants in Italy, and I could not have asked for better assistants than Federica Fabrizzi in Rome and Erika Moseson in Florence. Veronica Wil- son also proved to be a knowledgeable and discerning research as- sistant in Connecticut. Other scholars pointed me to new sources or gave me drafts of their own work. I would particularly like to thank Bruce Craig, Thomas Devine, John Earl Haynes, Gary May, Herbert Romerstein, Roger Sandilands, and Allen Weinstein. Hay- den Peake, who provided me with documents and contacts from his own research on Bentley, was a model of scholarly generosity. My colleague Karen Halttunen read the chapters on gender with her trademark intelligence and insight. I am very grateful to all of the people who graciously sub- mitted to interviews about remote—and sometimes painful—epi- sodes in their past or their relatives’ past. Eleanore Lee provided tips, encouragement, and much information about her uncle, Dun- can Lee. George Pancoast, Harvey Matusow, Robert Lamphere, Jack Danahy, John Turrill, Edward Buckley, and Don Jardine obligingly shared their memories of Bentley in interviews. Ish- Tseng 2003.10.24 14:06 14 of 284 bel Lee, Joanna Budenz Gallegos, Nancy Applegate, Sheila Kurtz, Richard Green, and Howard Dejean answered key questions. At the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Middletown, the Reverend Margaret Minnick provided great help in researching Bentley’s last years. Kenneth Boagni graciously opened up his Louisiana barn to my intrepid research assistant, Laura Midgett, to assist her search for documents on Bentley. Roger Turrill kindly agreed to send me the photograph of his cousin Elizabeth in his family photo album.