The Rebuttal: Defending 'American Betrayal' From the Book-Burners (26 page)

Just to
be on the safe side, I tried to introduce him to “Nelly.” He politely declined
this idea.
I offered him a phone number and address here or in Washington
where he could call or write a message to me; he gently turned this down, too.
All this shows that he prizes his safety and doesn’t want to become tightly
connected to us.
Sometime in the future I may have to tell him my
surname. It’s hard to set up a realistic cover story about how we got to know
him, and equally hard to develop a natural friendship with him, when he doesn’t
know my surname.
I hope he will not betray us on his own initiative: he is
quite tightly connected to us through his materials (29.7.42).

* * * * *

Yellow
Notebook #2 P. 30 (from Duggan's personal file)

Mer – to C
9.10.42
“He is an honest and genuinely progressive-minded person…He is a
true American with all the patriotic qualities, and has spent a number of years
doing significant, high-level work towards the realization of the USA’s
imperialist ambitions. [Mer wanted to introduce 19 to “Nelly” in case he was
drafted into the army.

Mer – to C 17.11.42
“He is a
genuinely progressive American. He sympathizes with us and understands our role
in this war, but at the same time, he is an American patriot through and
through. His intellect is shaped by his continued, concrete work putting into
practice America’s influence on its neighbors. He is not a fellowcountryman or
a paid probationer, and he is absolutely determined not to risk his position. Having
once been burned, he is prone to significantly exaggerating any danger. He used
to bring me bundles of the most interesting materials from his office; now he
does everything he can to avoid even citing his sources when he reports
something to me.”
[Av annotation in right hand column] In his letters,
Mer calls 19 Frank



* * * * *

And
“Frank” is identified both in AV’s notebooks and in Venona as Duggan while Mer
is identified in both as Akhmerov

* * * * *

The
third passage of particular relevance to Venona 812 is from White notebook #1
page 55, an August 1944 message (after Venona 812)


C. to
May (11 August 1944) (copy of cipher cable)


Information
has been received that Amer. intelligence has installed microphones in all
Soviet institutions in the US. Am. intelligence has established the names of
many Sov. intel. agents working in the most varied businesses.
Change of
pseudonyms:

Mer — Albert

Nelly — Stella 

Pal — Robert 

Polo — Donald

Jurist — Lawyer

Clever Girl — Myrna

Informer — Douglas

19 — Sherwood

Dir — Cat


Carmen — Miranda

Don — Senor

Satyr — Rita


Hell — Lion


* * * * *

Sherwood,
the former “19”, is identified in the notebooks and in Venona as Duggan.

All of
the pages where Duggan, "19", etc are in the notebooks and in Venona
are in the essay and both sources are available on the web in easily searchable
formats at the Wilson Center virtual archive. There are so many references to "19"
as Duggan from the mid-30 to 1944 in AV's notebooks that I cannot take
seriously the view that "19" in Venona 812 is someone other than
Duggan. 

Second,
as we explained in the essay, we don't give much evidential weight to
non-contemporaneous memories of what someone heard someone else say absent
other corroboration. That is why we regard Gordievsky's twenty year old memory
of what Akhmerov said of events twenty years earlier as worth noting but not
much more than that. At the symposium Ed did mention briefly in one of the
Q&A sessions that he no longer held to his view that "19" was
Hopkins. I remember the remark but don't specifically remember at which session
it was, only that it was an interjection when someone else was talking,
presumably something involving Hopkins, but I don't remember who. Mark Kramer
says it was in a session he chaired and while he thought it was an interjection
on something you said he now thinks it might have been Herb. In any event he
also talked to Ed about it when they went to the Metro after the session ended
that day and Ed was clear he no longer held that "19" was Hopkins. And
Ron Radosh also remembers Ed's remarks. I thought that in the essay, however,
we should not go beyond my less clear memory which, of course, didn't bring you
into it at all. In any event, given our attitude that hearsay evidence of this
sort should be kept in mind but not given great weight, a note seemed the
appropriate place. We simply to not regard what Ed said as of anything other
than minor interest. It is irrelevant to the matter of "19's"
identity.

As was
mentioned in our essay, when Vassiliev's notebooks came into our hands, our
regard for Ed's historical skills was such that he was one of the specialists
we gave copies to a year before the notebooks were made public in order to
prepare papers for the 2009 symposium. 

When I gave him the
notebooks I mentioned to him that there was material on "19" in the
notebooks. This was not a total surprise to Ed. In 1999 Weinstein and
Vassiliev's book,
The Haunted Wood
, had come out and there were
references in it to Duggan with the cover name "19" in the
1930s. Andrew and Mitrokhin's first book, also 1999, also mentioned
"19" as Duggan in the 30s. Ed and I had discussed this when the books
came out. (Ed often stopped by my office at the Library of Congress to discuss
Cold War history and our latest research.) Ed's assumption/hope was that
"19" was Duggan only in the 30s and his conclusion about
"19" in 1943 was still possible. I didn't think so, and both books
reinforced my view that Harvey and I had been exercising proper caution in our
Venona book decision to stick with the Venona analysts designation of
"19" as unidentified. The notebooks, of course, settled the matter.

When I
gave Ed the notebooks I assumed he would review the entries on "19"
even though he was focused on Hiss. We were both busy in this period, me with
getting
Spies
ready and Ed with his Hiss essay, and when we met we were
usually discussed Hiss, a major concern to both of us and getting the Hiss
story right was important to both of us. 

I didn't
want to be in an 'I told you so' mode, so I left it to Ed to raise the matter
of "19" when he felt like it. I never had any concerns that he would
not accept the evidence. Ed was an excellent archivally oriented historian, and
after he examined them he regarded AV's notebooks as totally reliable and was
enthusiastic that they would allow him to put an end to the Hiss matter. Ed was
deeply frustrated, indeed outraged, that
Intelligence and National Security
had
published an article by John Lowenthal that in a highly mendacious essay
continued to defend Hiss and denied that "Ales" in Venona was Hiss. Ed
responded with “Who Was ‘Venona’s ‘Ales’? Cryptanalysis and the Hiss Case,”
Intelligence
and National Security
 18, no. 3 (Autumn 2003). He thought the
essay he prepared based on AV's notebooks would be the definitive scholarly
word on the Hiss case. It may be.

The only
reason Ed's brief remark at the symposium sticks in my mind at all was that I
had been waiting for him to bring up the "19" issue. I thought we
might talk about it at the dinner after the end of the symposium for paper
givers, but Ed begged off attending, explaining that lately his energy level
had deteriorated and he found it difficult to stay awake after 9 PM. At the
time I attached no special significance to that, but Ed died only a week or so
later, in his sleep, from heart failure. I assume his declining energy was, in
fact, a symptom of his declining heart. I thought it a great loss to scholarly
history. It was also a personal loss to me. Ed was, well, a peculiar
personality, a loner, and rubbed lots of people the wrong way. I, however,
admired his dogged research skills, shared his interpretive stance toward Cold
War history, and happily accepted his eccentricities (as he accepted mine). He
was a friend and I regret his premature death.



John

#3:
 
M Stanton Evans to John Earl Haynes

On Wed,
Aug 28, 2013 at 7:31 PM, Mary Jo and Bill

Dear
John,

Thank
you for your reply to my recent memo. I appreciate your taking the time from a
crowded schedule to address my questions.

I wrote
to you at such length because I wanted to correct the wildly inaccurate record
out there concerning what I said at the conference, and also because I wanted
to get your further comment on the Mark recantation issue.

In your
response you de-emphasize the recantation business, saying it is a distraction
from the main issue the evidence that No. 19 in fact was Duggan. That the main
issue is Duggan vs Hopkins is of course true, but the two elements obviously go
together. If Mark in fact recanted, as noted in my previous memo, that would
for most people have clinched beyond any doubt that No. 19 was Duggan.

As to
the significance of this whole side dispute, I also think it overblown –
not just the recantation part, but the No. 19 stuff in general. The matter was
never discussed by me at the conference, or by anyone else within my earshot.
If it was discussed, I never heard it, or even heard about it in connection
with the conference, until Radosh and Kramer brought it up in the attack on
West.

In which
connection, it’s noteworthy that Kramer in one of his emails describes the Mark
recantation issue as a “red herring.” That’s an interesting thing for him to
say, as he has been quite active in dragging this red herring across the path,
and doing so repeatedly.

In point
of fact, he and Radosh have raised the recantation issue at least four times I
know of (there may be others I haven’t seen), three of them involving me
– all for the purpose of clinching the argument that No. 19 was Duggan
instead of Hopkins. These statements are explicit, quite circumstantial, and
categorical in nature—and as they relate to me, completely false. They
are as follows (emphasis added throughout):

1)
   
Radosh in his 7,000 word
attack on West, entitled “McCarthy on Steroids” (August 7): “At a conference on
Soviet espionage held a week before his untimely death, West’s source, Eduard
Mark,
publicly stated that he now acknowledged that Harry
Hopkins was
not Agent 19
, and that the conclusion he reached in his 1998 article was
false.”

2)
   
Radosh expanding on this on
August 17, quoting an email from Kramer, saying: “Ron, I can definitely confirm
it.
I was chairing the session, and Ed intervened when Stan Evans referred
to Harry Hopkins as No. 19.
Ed said, ‘the Vassiliev notebooks show that
this isn’t true. I thought it was but it isn’t. When I found out that I’m
wrong, I’m willing to admit it.’ I talked about this with Ed after the session,
as he and I were heading for the metro station.”

To this
statement from Kramer, Radosh added: “Others, including me, remember this quite
well.”

3)
   
On August 18, Kramer expanded
further on the recantation theme in another message to Radosh, circulated to
you and others. This says :
“Yes, Ed made the comment while Evans was
talking, but Evans just continued talking, evidently unaware (or at least not
willing to acknowledge) that he was being contradicted.”

To this
Kramer again added the comment about the metro, but with some puzzling changes:
“
I was unable to call on Ed
because the session was already going too
long and the WWICS had a reception scheduled. As Ed and I were walking to the
metro afterward, I told him that
I had wanted to have him speak but was
worried that it would prompt further comments by Evans and Romerstein. So I
just called a halt.”

Kramer
wanted Eduard Mark to speak but didn’t call on him because of Evans and
Romerstein? Compare this to the Kramer quotes from Mark, in paragraph #2 above,
which are quite different . In the new version “Ed intervened” has disappeared,
along with the rather full bodied statement by Mark recanting his position. Now
it appears that I (and perhaps Herb) somehow or other prevented Mark from being
called on to speak in answer to my alleged comments . Which is it?

4)
   
Also on August 18, Radosh
emailed to Andrew Bostom, a person unknown to me but a defender of West, once
more stressing Eduard Mark’s (non-existent) exchange with me, as relayed by
Kramer and confirmed by Radosh. This is worth quoting at some length:

“So you
[Bostom] accept the hearsay of Gordievsky, then a junior officer, of what he
heard 20 years ago supposedly from Akhmerov 40 years ago, and don’t accept what
Mark Kramer, a distinguished scholar and Cold War historian, says took place
at
a conference that is recent at which I and others heard this exchange?
The
exchange came up while discussing another point, and was not the focus of the
entire conference.
It occurred only because he answered the argument made by
Stan Evans.
Why should there have been a major presentation about it in an
exchange during a Q and A discussion?

“If this
is hearsay, and hence you dismiss it, you must also dismiss the Gordievsky
claim as hearsay. I await your answer to this, Dr. Bostom.”