Spies

The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America

Haynes John Earl, Klehr Harvey, Vassiliev Alexander

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 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.

About the Author

John Earl Haynes is a historian in the Manuscript Division, the Library of Congress.

Harvey Klehr is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Politics and History, Emory University.

Alexander Vassiliev, journalist and co-author with Allen Weinstein of "The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America", now lives in the UK.

Reviews

"This work should serve as the final salvo in the long battle between those who are still in denial regarding KGB espionage in America in the 1930s and 40s and those who assert that this story must be told" – David Murphy, author of "What Stalin Knew"

"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"

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