"Somehow, settling factual disputes about who was and wasn't a spy [for the Soviets, during the Second World War] has failed to create any new consensus. Instead, it has brought the fight about Communism in America back to life."

Jacob Weisberg

"Cold War Without End," The New York Times, November 28, 1999.

>> ELIZABETH BENTLEY: THE BLOND SPY QUEEN

As I began to write Legacy of a False Promise, I realized how little I knew about Elizabeth Bentley, the cooperative witness mentioned repeatedly in my father's 1955 testimony before The House Committee on Un-American Activities. My research revealed that in 1948, while testifying before HUAC, Elizabeth Bentley named numerous government workers as having willingly provided information to the Soviets through her. Bentley claimed that between 1941 and 1944 she, a member of the Communist underground, had been asked by her lover, Russian agent and American Communist Party official Jacob Golos, "to take charge of individuals and groups who were employed in the United States Government and in position to furnish information... political, military, whatever they could lay their hands on." [1] Golos had asked her to meet with his sources, collect their dues, "calm their fears, and flatter their egos." [2]

Bentley testified that she had revered Golos, whom she viewed as "a great idealist," a man she considered to be "working for the betterment of the world...." [3] She told the Committee that as Golos' courier she had delivered to him in New York copies of government documents provided to her by federal employees. [4] These government employees, Bentley explained, had been willing to take this risk "because they had been told that it was their duty as Communists to do it, and they had been told that Russia was our ally, that she was bearing the brunt of the war, that she was not being properly treated as an ally, and it was their duty to do something about it." [5]

Most prominent among the names on Bentley's list were FDR White House aide, Lauchlin Currie, [6] and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Harry Dexter White. [7] But of particular interest to me were the names I recognized as friends or associates of my mother and father during the time they worked for the government in the 1930s and '40s. Shocked to imagine that my parents had known people accused of having spied for the Soviet Union, I made it my business to learn what I could about the activities of Communists working for the U.S. government and, in particular, about the alleged involvement of my parents' friends and colleagues.

Might my parents also have been providing privileged information to the Soviets? I had to know.

Elizabeth Bentley made a sensational witness. In her testimony she told colorful stories and provided specific details and descriptions of people and events. The 1948 HUAC hearing propelled Bentley into public prominence. Reporters bestowed upon her the name "the blond spy queen" and though her facts and details sometimes changed, and though she named people she had never met, and though she provided no documentary evidence to support her allegations, the FBI and Congress continued to use her as a "professional" (paid) witness for many years to come. [8] [9]

Elizabeth Bentley was a graduate of Vassar College. Following her graduation in 1930, she studied briefly in Italy, where she became deeply disturbed by what she saw as the repressive, fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. Upon her return to the States, Bentley became involved with the anti-fascist movement in New York City. It was in that context that she joined the Communist Party (in March 1935) and later met Jacob Golos (in October 1938), [10] who became her lover and her mentor.

Jacob Golos, whose real name was Jacob Rasin, was a Jew born in the anti-Semitic Russian Empire. As a young man, he had joined the Communist underground struggle to overthrow the czar, very nearly losing his life in the battle. When Bentley met him, Golos had become a devoted Soviet NKVD [11] officer associated with the Comintern (the Soviet-dominated agency linking foreign Communist parties and contributing funds to their operations); [12] he was also a member of the CPUSA Central Control Committee. [13] Golos served as president of the World Tourists Company, a corporation that handled tourism between the U.S and the USSR, until an investigation by the Justice Department exposed it as a front and nearly resulted in Golos' imprisonment for failure to register as a foreign agent. After the exposure of World Tourists, Golos set up a new company, the U.S. Service and Shipping Corporation. He chose John Hazard Reynolds, a Communist sympathizer with a social pedigree, to become the company's president. Bentley became the company's vice president; she earned a handsome salary in that role. [14]

Bentley testified that when Golos died in 1943 of heart failure, she found herself thrown into direct contact with Russian agents whom she found vulgar and unprincipled, "the gangster type." "Having worked with Mr. Golos," Bentley said, "I had been terrifically shielded from the realities behind this thing, and when he died, I was thrown in direct contact with Russians who had just come over from Russia .... They thought that I was much more sophisticated than I was. They thought that I knew what was going on, and unfortunately they landed on me with both feet, made no bones of the fact that they had contempt for the American Communists with their vague idealism, no bones of the fact that they were using the American Communist Party as a recruitment for espionage...." [15] [16] Bentley told HUAC that when her new Russian handlers insisted on taking over control of the federal employees because they were convinced "the American nets were sloppily operated and violated the rules of tradecraft (members not only knew each other, they socialized and in some cases lived together)," [17] Bentley tried to protect her sources by appealing to CPUSA leader, Earl Browder. She asked Browder to use his influence to keep the Russians away from her "people." Bentley's efforts failed, she said. And, eventually, fearing being caught by the FBI and possibly also fearing for her own safety, she decided, in August of 1945, [18] [19] to go to the FBI to tell her story. If Elizabeth Bentley had not switched allegiances, it is hard to know for sure what her fate might have been, once cooperative witnesses Whittaker Chambers and Louis Budenz [20] went public with their stories. [21]

The FBI was skeptical at first; for months it took no action. [22] But by 1946, the Republicans, who had gained control of Congress and were charging President Truman with being "soft on communism," threw their enthusiastic support behind HUAC's newly energized investigation into Communist influence in labor, Hollywood and the government. Government officials began taking the threat of espionage very seriously. The FBI tapped the phones of people named by Bentley and put them under surveillance. [23] Though few American public officials were really afraid that members of the Communist Party would take over the U.S. Government, politicians did become convinced that Communists working for the government posed a significant threat and they worried that literally scores of American citizens might be working for the Soviets. [24]

FOOTNOTES

[1]  Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the U.S. Government. Hearings before the Committee on Un-American Activities, U.S. Congress Committee Hearings. Eightieth Congress. Senate Library. Vol. 1223, 1948, 507.

[2]   Kathryn S. Olmstead, Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 36.

[3]   Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the U.S. Government, 540.

[4]   Ibid., 511

[5]   Ibid., 526

[6]   Lauchlin Currie, a Canadian-born economist, joined the Roosevelt administration in 1939 as the president's economic affairs adviser.

[7]   Harry Dexter White was the highest ranking federal employee ever to have been named in a Communist espionage investigation. Bentley had no hesitancy in implicating him even though she claimed never to have met him personally; she did not know whether or not White was a Communist. (He was not.) Named Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in 1941 under Secretary Henry Morgenthau, White had responsibility for matters relating to foreign relations and, later, Treasury business involving economic and financial matters. White is known for his role in the development of the International Monetary Fund; he was its first Executive Director. White also participated in the development of the "Morgenthau Plan," which recommended dismembering Germany after the war and dedicating parts of the territory to agriculture rather than industry in order to ensure stability in the region. Earl Latham, Communist Controversy in Washington: From the New Deal to McCarthy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1966), 177. William K. Klingman, Encyclopedia of the McCarthy Era (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1996), 399. For more about the Harry Dexter White spy case see R. Bruce Craig, The Harry Dexter White Spy Case (University Press of Kansas, 2004).

[8] Klingaman, Encyclopedia of the McCarthy Era, 23.

[9] One government employee named by Bentley in the hearing was William W. Remington of the War Production Board. Remington challenged Bentley's testimony and ultimately sued her for libel. The case was settled out of court in Remington's favor and, for a while, Bentley's credibility was in question. In response to this challenge, the government set up a grand jury investigation of Remington and ended up indicting him for perjury. After his ex-wife, under duress, provided evidence against him, Remington was convicted for denying he had been Communist. During his incarceration, he was killed by another prisoner. Ibid.

[10] Hayden B. Peake, "Afterword," in Elizabeth Bentley, Out of Bondage: KGB Target: Washington, D.C. (New York: Ivy Books, 1988), 227.

[11] The Soviet state security service, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (Cheka) was established in 1917. It was reorganized into the United State Political Administration (GPU, later OGPU) in 1922. In 1934, the functions of the OGPU were transferred to the Peoples Comissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). After World War II the Communist secret police was reorganized several more times becoming the NKGB in 1941 and again from 1943 to 1946. In March 1954, the agency became The Committee for State Security (KGB). The KGB was dissolved in 1991.

For a chronology of Soviet secret police agencies visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Soviet_secret_police_agencies.

[12] Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 22.

[13] Elizabeth Bentley believed that Jacob Golos was one of the Russian Secret Police assigned to carry out the assassination of Leon Trotsky. Peake, "Afterword," in Bentley, Out of Bondage (New York: Ivy Books, 1988), 84, 255.

[14] Bentley, Out of Bondage, 86.

[15] Hearings Regarding Communist Espionage in the U.S. Government, 540.

[16] Bentley's first direct contact with the Russian Secret Police was a man codenamed "John," later identified as Anatoli Antonovich Yatskov, the man later in charge of obtaining scientific information about the atom bomb from Los Alamos. Bentley had three consecutive Russian handlers after Golos died in 1943. The first was "Bill," whose real name was Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov. Akhmerov was the leading NKGB "illegal," (spy without diplomatic cover) in the United States prior to and during World War II. In October 1944, Bentley was switched to "Jack," active NKVD agent, Joseph Katz. In an effort to resist orders to give over her American sources, Bentley demanded to speak to Katz's superior. In November 1944, she was put in contact with "Al," Anatoly Gorsky, Secretary of the Soviet embassy (known in the U.S. as Anatoly Gromov), her final Soviet controller. Olmstead, Red Spy Queen, 44, 72-78.

[17] Peake, "Afterword," in Bentley, Out of Bondage, 306-315.

[18] Elizabeth Bentley first contacted the FBI on August 23, 1945, and over the next several months began to tell her story. She claimed that her primary reason for going to the FBI was a moral one; the evidence suggests, however, that she was afraid of being caught by the FBI (which up to this time had failed to link her to government espionage) and was afraid the Russians were after her. Peake, "Afterword," in Bentley, Out of Bondage, 219-222.

[19] The KGB became aware of Bentley's defection through British double agent, Kim Philby, a senior British agent who was also a Soviet spy. Lauren Kessler, Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered in the McCarthy Era (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 140.

[20] Ex-Communist and paid informer Louis Budenz had been providing dramatic if often unsubstantiated testimony about the Communist conspiracy in the U.S. to government officials since 1945. His testimony partially corroborated Bentley's testimony. Budenz, who retuned to the Catholic Church after leaving the CP, became one of the government's leading witnesses against accused Communists.

[21] Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev suggest that Bentley's life was, in fact, in danger. They report that a Soviet agent, Joseph Katz, had tried to "organize for the NKGB the retributive murder of arch-defector Elizabeth Bentley." Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America -- The Stalin Era (New York: Random House, 1999), 237.

[22] In September of 1945, a Russian code clerk, Igor Gouzenko, defected from his station in Ottawa and produced documentary evidence that Soviet diplomatic and scientific personnel had been active spies inside Canada. Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1998), 170.

[23] Ibid., 173. 

[24] Ibid., 144, 161.