The Rebuttal: Defending 'American Betrayal' From the Book-Burners (2 page)

7) FALSE: As noted above
(see #3), Radosh omits my very specific explanation of and use of the term,
which I introduce thus (p. 68):

“As [M. Stanton] Evans lays out in
detail, much of it drawn from newly declassified FBI and Senate records, the
United States wasn’t just riddled by Communist agents; we were for all intents
and purposes occupied by a small army—a small army being just what this
kind of war requires. Expert estimates now peg the number of Americans
assisting Soviet intelligence agencies during the 1930s and 1940s as exceeding
five hundred. Not
one
Aldrich Ames. Not
two
Rosenbergs. Not
five
“magnificent” Cambridgers. More than five hundred willing and variously
able American traitors, many operating at the very highest levels of the
federal government, with who knows how many more in support roles. This was a
national security fiasco of a magnitude that has never, ever entered national
comprehension.”

Radosh:

“She
believes
she has
exposed
“the Communist-agent-occupation of the U.S. government”
during the Roosevelt and Truman eras, and that her discoveries add up to a
Soviet-controlled American government
that conspired to strengthen Russia throughout World War II at the expense of
American interests, marginalize anti-Communist Germans, and deliver the
crucial material for the Atomic Bomb
to
Stalin and his henchmen.” (Emphasis added.)

8) FALSE: I don’t “believe”
I “exposed” anything that has been previously documented. This belief is
not
in my book.

FACT: What I have done is
connect some dots and also resurrect what has long been in plain sight –
or, perhaps, obscured from plain sight by Left-liberal convention, Soviet
design, elite complicity and the like. Everything in my book is open record,
and appropriately sourced. The breathlessness in this charge is Radosh’s alone.

8a) FALSE: Note the
repetition of the term “Soviet-controlled American government.”

FACT: As noted above (see
#3a, #6), I do not use the word “controlled” in this way, and, in fact,
repeatedly describe a Soviet-
influenced
American
government.
Again, not in my book.

8b) As noted above (see #3,
#7), I discuss “de facto” occupation – a concept Radosh ignores.

8c) Another FALSE phrase contained in the
Radosh sentence above concerns the delivery of “the crucial material” for
Stalin’s atomic bomb. The concept of “crucial” falls into the Radosh pattern of
exaggeration noted above.

FACT:
American
Betrayal
discusses the documented, three-quarters of a ton of uranium that
went through to Stalin under pressure of Harry Hopkins’ Lend-Lease program
– and much more. Such exaggeration by Radosh and Horowitz is inaccurate.
On p. 126 of
American Betrayal
,
historian Richard Rhodes offers a better way to think about the
23 atomic materials including uranium (and
don’t forget over 13 million pounds of aluminum tubing)
that Lend-Lease
sent Stalin during World War II: Such ingredients, Rhodes writes, were “useful
in constructing and controlling a nuclear reactor.”

Radosh:

“It also
conspired
to cover up the betrayal. In West’s summation: `The Roosevelt
administration [was] penetrated, fooled, subverted, in effect hijacked by
Soviet agents… and engaged in a “sell-out” to Stalin” that “conspirators of
silence on the Left…would bury for as long as possible, desperately throwing
mud over it and anyone who wanted the sun to shine in.’ “

The
quotation in full:

“The
Roosevelt administration, penetrated, fooled, subverted, in effect hijacked, by
Soviet agents, as a matter of national policy, mixed them up [US war interests
and Soviet war interests], much to the world’s deep, vast suffering. This
`sell-out’ to Stalin, as critics tagged it (and they didn’t know the half of
it), would become a bone of sharpest and most vociferous contention that the
conspirators of silence on the Left, in the Democratic Party, and among the
Washington elites would bury for as long as possible, desperately throwing mud
over it and anyone who wanted to let the sun shine in. Why? As G. Bernard
Noble, chief of the Division of Historical Policy Research at the State
Department, wrote to Secretary of State Dean Acheson in 1950, the publication
of the Yalta papers, for example, would `embarrass’ too many people and, in the
acid paraphrase of Bryton Barron, fired Yalta archivist and author of
Inside
the State Department,
`lead to demands for publication of the minutes of
other conferences.’

“More exposure, and we can’t have that.”

Radosh:

“According to
West, it was only because Washington was `Communist-occupied’ that the United
States aligned itself with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany.”

9) FALSE. Like so many
false Radosh statements, this one is unsupported by any quotations.

FACT: The manner in which
Radosh, deliberately or ineptly, mischaracterizes my thesis is a challenge to
overcome throughout this rebuttal process. This particular claim does not
appear in my book. It is true, of course, that pro-Soviet and Soviet influence
inside our government helped foster the US-USSR military alliance. The
implication Radosh seems to advance suggests, sans Communist influence,
Washington might have aligned itself with Nazi Germany, and that’s
not in my book.

That said, I do argue that
the US relationship with the Soviet Union from recognition (1933) forward
precipitated a moral decline that grew from our government’s continual need to
lie to cover up Soviet crime, even against this country and its citizens, in
order to continue such relations and, later, military alliance. This alliance,
I argue, drew us into actual and increasing complicity with one genocidal
monster to defeat another genocidal monster, a concept explained by
Solzhenitsyn, whom − among other luminaries, including Conquest, Koestler,
Orwell, Besancon − I discuss at great length in the book. The Radosh
“take-down” never mentions any of them.

From
American Betrayal
, p. 196:

“The
fact is, the implications of normalizing relations with the thoroughly abnormal
USSR didn’t just reward and legitimize a regime of rampantly metastasizing
criminality. Because the Communist regime was so openly and ideologically
dedicated to our destruction, the act of recognition defied reason and the
demands of self-preservation. Recognition and all that came with it, including
alliance, would soon become
the enemy
of reason and self-preservation.
In this way, as Dennis J. Dunn points out, we see a double standard in American
foreign policy evolve, and, I would add, in American thinking more generally.
It was here that we abandoned the lodestars of good and evil, the clarity of
black and white. Closing our eyes, we dove head first into a weltering morass
of exquisitely enervating and agonizing grays.”

Later, on p. 205:

“As
Solzhenitsyn would later tell us, `World democracy could have defeated one
totalitarian regime after another, the German, and then the Soviet. Instead it
strengthened Soviet totalitarianism [and] helped bring into existence a third
totalitarianism, that of China.’ ”72

Radosh:

“But Ms. West
writes without an understanding of historical context and lacks awareness of
much of the scholarly literature on the subjects she writes about.”

10) FALSE: As noted above,
(see Author’s Note), Radosh obscures the extensive bibliography
American Betrayal
draws from, as
indicated in the book’s 944 endnotes. As noted above (see Author’s Note), my
true crime here is rejecting the “scholarly” (read: liberal) consensus as
drastically incomplete.

Radosh:

“Moreover, she
disregards the findings of the sources she does rely on when they contradict
her yellow journalism conspiracy theories.”

11) FALSE.

FACT: I do not disregard the finding of
sources when they contradict. See for example p. 147, p. 164, p. 267, p. 372.

11a) I do not write “yellow
journalism conspiracy theories.” Never have, never will. “Yellow journalism” is
a sensational style of journalism that is sourced thinly or
not at all.
American Betrayal
is
densely, thickly sourced with 900-plus endnotes. (I note this again, because
Radosh never cites or describes my extensive, careful documentation.) My
sources include congressional investigations, State Department records,
memoirs, histories, biographies, military histories, diplomatic histories,
intelligence histories, newspapers, magazines, the writings of Solzhenitsyn,
Koestler, Conquest, Orwell, Lyons, Kravchenko, Dallin, etc.

11b) I do not
write “conspiracy theories.” I write about the Soviet conspiracy – an
extensively documented fact, not a theory.

Radosh:

“Consequently she
arrives at judgment after judgment that is not only bizarre on its face, but
also unwarranted by the evidence and refuted by the very authorities she draws
on.”

12) FALSE: Radosh’s opinion
(“bizarre”) aside: The evidence for my judgments is plentiful whether or not
Radosh omits mention of its range and depth, as listed in 900-plus endnotes.

My judgments are based on
my reading of the evidence.

Take it or leave it, but
don’t distort it.

Radosh:

“As a historian I
normally would not have agreed to review a book such as this one. But I changed
my mind after seeing the reckless endorsements of its unhinged theories by a
number of conservative individuals and organizations.”

“UNHINGED”?

Radosh:

“These included
the Heritage Foundation which has hosted her for book promotions at a lunchtime
speech and a dinner; Breitbart.com which is serializing
America Betrayed
;
PJ Media which has already run three favorable features on West; Amity Shlaes,
who writes unnervingly that West’s book, `masterfully reminds us what history
is for: to suggest action for the present’; and by conservative political
scientist and media commentator Monica Crowley, who called West’s book `A
monumental achievement.’ “

RECKLESS ENDORSEMENTS? Over
to you, Monica, Amity, Heritage, PJM, Heritage, Breitbart, et al.

NOTE: “Bizarre”? Here’s
bizarre: From his list of “reckless endorsements,” Radosh omits the “reckless
endorsement” I received from M. Stanton Evans, author of
Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Sen. Joe McCarthy and His
Fight Against America’s Enemies
, and, with the late Soviet subversion and
counterintelligence expert, Herbert Romerstein,
Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government.
This is truly “bizarre” because Evans’ praise for
American Betrayal
is proudly displayed on the front cover
.

For the record, Evans
wrote: “This explosive book is a long-needed answer to court histories that
continue to obscure key facts about our backstage war with Moscow.
American Betrayal
is must-reading for
serious students of security issues and Cold War deceptions, both foreign and
domestic.”

Could Evans’ omission in
Radosh’s list of “reckless” endorsers be due to the fact that Evans authored an
epic evisceration of Radosh’s sloppy and mendacious review of
Blacklisted by History
? Or, more to the
point, could it be because Evans is the foremost authority on the McCarthy era
and because Evans’ valued endorsement of my book might detract from Radosh’s
attempted “take-down”?

Just wondering
.

Radosh:

“West has
evidently seduced conservatives who are justifiably appalled by the left’s
rewriting of history, its denials that Communists ever posed a threat, and its
claim that Communist infiltration was a destructive myth created by
witch-hunters intent on suppressing dissent.”

SEDUCED?

Radosh:

“For these
readers, West’s credibility derives from her aggressive counter vision. For
those who have not read the important works of Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes,
Christopher Andrew, Alexander Vassiliev, Allen Weinstein and others, what she
has written may seem a revelation, as she herself claims.”

13) FALSE: I do not claim
as revelation the findings of other authors.

FACT: Rather, I quote and
cite their work.

Radosh:

”But for anyone
familiar with the historical literature, the core of what she has written is
well known and what is new is either overheated, or simply false and
distorted—the sort of truculent recklessness that gives anti-communism a
bad name.

FOUL: Ad hominem. No
evidence. (The evidence Radosh does present I rebut below. I will show that the
“truculent recklessness” on display is Radosh’s.)

Radosh:

“One of the most
unsettling aspects of West’s use of previous authorities who provide the only
reliable information in her book is the way she attacks the very writers who
pioneered in exposing Soviet espionage and infiltration, while also
disregarding their conclusions when they don’t agree with hers.”