The Rebuttal: Defending 'American Betrayal' From the Book-Burners (27 page)

As you
can see from these quotes, the “red herring” about Mark’s supposed recantation
was repeatedly brought into play by Kramer-Radosh, not by me . Further, as set
forth in my earlier memo, all of this as it pertains to me is fantasy, pure and
simple. No such encounter between Eduard Mark and myself ever happened, period.

Looking
at this amalgam of conflicting and constantly shifting statements about
something I allegedly did but in fact did not leads me to question the whole
recantation scenario that it relates to. Hence my inquiry to you in my earlier
memo about your recollection of the matter. 

In your
reply you indicate that Kramer now says he may have been mistaken about me
– which would be quite a switch from the repeated and explicit statements
quoted above – and that the person who got into an exchange with Eduard
Mark was Herb. But if this is the revised new version, it still doesn’t get the
job done, since Herb ‘s somewhat oblique exchange with Mark was premised on
Akhmerov, not source 19. Their opposing statements concerning Hopkins (both of
which were in fact recorded) are as set forth in my previous memo.

As you
probably know, Herb’s emphasis on the Gordiesky-Akhmerov angle was of long
standing. He for example set forth his conclusion that Hopkins was a Soviet
agent in reviewing the Gordievsky-Christopher Andrew book over 20 years ago (
Human
Events
, January 12, 1991). This was based mainly on the Gordievsky comments
(with some not-too-flattering Herb references to Andrew), but also on Hopkins
episodes involving Kravchenko, Zarubin, Philip Faymonville and others. None of
this concerned No.19 or Mark’s article on the subject, which wasn’t published
until 1998.

Even
more to the present point it was the Gordievsky –Akhmerov matter, not
source 19, that Herb referenced in his comments to Vassiliev at the conference
about the workings of the KGB, which apparently angered Mark.

As you
also know, Herb’s assessment of all such issues was based on great first hand
experience and extensive knowledge : his personal acquaintance with Gordievsky,
long study of the KGB and 40 plus years of real-world experience in the
intelligence wars. (This backed by senior intelligence officers who de-briefed
Gordievsky in the ‘80s, and maintained contact with him thereafter, who strongly
vouch for his veracity and reliability in such matters.)

I
personally have never contended in speech or writing, that I could on my own
authority conclude that Hopkins was a Soviet agent, since I don’t have the
credentials or expertise to make such a judgment. Herb, however, had both. The
contention to this effect via Gordievsky-Herb thus can’t in my view simply be
dismissed in casual fashion as “hearsay” and swept under the carpet. All of
which, however, is the topic for another day – and another essay.

In the
meanwhile, my thanks as ever for your time and your attention to this memo.

Best
Wishes, 

Stan
Evans

In Defense of Diana West

By M. Stanton Evans

cnsnews.com

September 13, 2013

Out of the public eye and far from the
daily headlines, a fierce verbal battle is currently being waged about the
course of American policy in the long death struggle with Moscow that we call
the Cold War.

At ground zero of this new dispute is
author Diana West, whose recent book,
American Betraya
l (St. Martin's), is a hard- hitting critique of the
strategy toward the Soviet Union pursued in the 1940s by President Franklin
Roosevelt, his top assistant Harry Hopkins, and various of their colleagues.
Ms. West in particular stresses the infiltration of the government of that era
by Communists and Soviet agents, linking the presence of these forces to U.S. policies
that appeased the Russians or served the interests of the Kremlin.

For making this critique, Ms. West has
been bitterly attacked by writers Ronald Radosh and David Horowitz, Roosevelt
biographer Conrad Black, and a considerable crew of others. The burden of their
complaint is that she is a "conspiracy theorist" and right wing nut
whose views are far outside the mainstream of historical writing, and that she
should not have presumed to write such a book about these important matters.

Though the professed stance of her
opponents is that of scholarly condescension, the language being used against
Ms. West doesn't read like scholarly discourse. She is, we're told,
"McCarthy on steroids," "unhinged," a "right-wing
loopy," not properly "house trained," "incompetent,"
purveying "a farrago of lies," and a good deal else of similar nature.
All of which looks more like the politics of personal destruction than debate
about serious academic issues.

From my standpoint, however, what is going
on here seems to be something more than personal. Having delved into these
matters a bit, I think I recognize the process that's in motion: the circling
of rhetorical wagons around a long accepted narrative about the Second World
War and the Cold War conflict that followed.

This narrative sets the limits of
permissible comment about American Cold War policy, bounded on the one side by
Roosevelt and Hopkins, representing generally speaking the forces of good
(appeasing Moscow, e.g., only in order to win the war with Hitler), and on the
other by Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, the supposed epitome of evil. Between
these boundaries, variations are allowed, but woe betide the writer who goes
beyond them. Ms. West has transgressed in both directions, sharply criticizing
Roosevelt/ Hopkins and speaking kindly of Joe McCarthy.

(Full disclosure: I provided a cover
endorsement for Ms. West's book, and wrote a book of my own some years ago
examining the myriad cases of McCarthy. Based on that background, I can testify
that conventional views about him are almost totally devoid of merit, based as
they are on extensive ignorance of the archival record.)

Especially galling to West's critics is
her contention that Washington in the war years was so riddled with Communists
and Soviet agents as to be in effect an "occupied" city
 
an image that seems to have sparked the
greatest anger and most denunciation of her thesis.

By using the "occupied" image,
Ms. West is of course not saying Soviet tanks were patrolling the streets of
Washington, or that Red martial law was imposed on its cowering citizens. What
she is arguing instead is that Soviet agents, Communists and fellow travelers
held official posts, or served at chokepoints of intelligence data, and from
these positions were able to exert pro-Soviet leverage on U.S. and other allied
policy. Though ignored in many conventional histories, the evidence to support
this view is overwhelming.

It is for instance abundantly plain, from
multiple sources of Cold War intel, that Communist/pro-Soviet penetration of
the government under FDR was massive, numbering in the many hundreds. These
pro-Red incursions started in the New Deal era of the 1930s, then accelerated
in the war years when the Soviets were our allies and safeguards against
Communist infiltration were all but nonexistent. The scope of the problem was
expressed as follows in an FBI report to Director J. Edgar Hoover:

"It has become increasingly clear...
that there are a tremendous number of persons employed in the United States
government who are Communists and who strive daily to advance the cause of
Communism and destroy the foundations of this government. Today nearly every
department or agency is infiltrated with them in varying degree.. To aggravate
the situation, they appear to have concentrated most heavily in departments
which make policy, or carry it into effect..."

Pro-Red penetration was especially heavy
in such war-time agencies as the Office of Strategic Services and Office of War
Information, which were thrown together in a hurry at the outset of the
conflict, with little thought for anti-Communist security vetting. But the
problem was acute also in old-line agencies such as the State and Treasury
departments, both of which by war's end were honeycombed with Soviet agents.(
Making matters worse, anti-Soviet officials and diplomats were in the meantime
being purged from their positions.)

Far from being lowly spear carriers on the
fringes, pro-Soviet operatives in case after case ascended to posts of great
power and influence. Among the most famous-though only three of a considerable
number-were Alger Hiss at the State Department, Harry D. White at the Treasury
and Lauchlin Currie at the White House. All of these, as we now know, were
Soviet agents, well positioned to affect the course of American policy in
matters of concern to Soviet dictator Stalin.

A prime example of such policy impact
occurred during the earliest wartime going, in the prelude to Pearl Harbor. At
this time, Soviet agents White and Currie maneuvered to prevent a truce between
the United States and Japan, which might have freed up the Japanese military
for an assault on Russia, an attack Stalin was desperate to fend off while he
was embroiled in Europe with the Nazis.

In this maneuvering, White worked with the
Soviet intelligence service KGB, and in parallel with the efforts of a Soviet
spy combine in Tokyo, headed by the German Communist Richard Sorge. The Sorge
group sought to persuade the Japanese that there was no percentage in attacking
Russia that there were much more inviting targets to be found down south in the
Pacific. One such target turned out to be the American naval base at Pearl
Harbor.

In the State Department, while Alger Hiss
would become the most notorious Soviet agent of the war years, he was far from
going solo. According to a long concealed but now recovered report compiled by
security officers of the State Department, there were at war's end no fewer
than 20 identified agents such as Hiss on the payroll, plus 13 identified
Communists and 90 other suspects and sympathizers serving with him.

Like the FBI report saying "nearly
every department" of the Federal government was infiltrated by Communist
apparatchiks, these staggering numbers from the State Department security force
look suspiciously like the description of a de facto "occupation"
given in Ms. West's supposedly unhinged essay.

At the Treasury, there were at least a
dozen Communists and Soviet agents, headed by Harry White, who exerted
influence on a host of issues. In late 1943, to cite a prominent instance,
White and his fellow Soviet agent Solomon Adler, Treasury attaché in China,
launched a disinformation campaign to discredit our anti-Communist ally Chiang
Kai-shek, deny him U.S. assistance, and turn U.S. policy in favor of the
Communists under Mao Tse-tung.

This campaign, aided by Adler's State
Department Chungking roommate John Stewart Service and other U.S. diplomats in
China, succeeded, with results that we are still living with today. Meanwhile,
an identical propaganda campaign was waged by U.S. and British pro-Red
officials to discredit the anti-Communists of the Balkans, in order to deliver
control of Yugoslavia to the Communist Tito. This, too, succeeded, resulting in
the communization of the country and capture and murder by Tito of his
anti-Communist rival, Gen. Draza Mihailovich.

In the summer of 1944, White and his
pro-Moscow Treasury colleagues played a crucial role in devising the so-called
"Morgenthau plan" for Germany, which would have converted the country
into a purely agrarian nation. They were involved as well in plans to turn two
million desperate anti- Soviet refugees over to the Russians, and a slave labor
proviso that would herd millions into the Soviet Gulag.

All these projects would be promoted in
the run-up to a 1944 Roosevelt- Churchill summit in Quebec, later becoming
American policy in Europe. At an in-house meeting just before the summit,
Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. met with a group of his staffers and
praised them for the excellent plans they had developed. Of these advisers no
fewer than six would later be identified under oath and in secret security data
as ideological Communists or Soviet agents. That amazing line-up of pro-Moscow
assets at a single U.S. Treasury meeting would once more seem to justify the
"occupied" description.

As to how such improbable things could
happen under FDR, a post-script to the above is suggestive. Though Roosevelt
signed off on the Morgenthau plan at Quebec, when he was later challenged on it
by War Secretary Henry Stimson, he said he didn't know how he could have done
so-that he "had evidently done it without much thought." As that
response implied, the President at this time was failing badly in his powers,
and would fail even more dramatically in the months to follow.

Which leads to a provisional wrap-up of
this discussion. The culmination of the policy debacle of the war years
occurred in 1945 at Yalta, where the American delegation headed by FDR made
innumerable concessions to the Russians: slave labor for the Gulag as post-war
"reparations" to the Kremlin, turning anti-Soviet refugees over to
Moscow, Soviet control of Manchuria's ports and railways-presaging the Red
conquest of China. A leading member of the American delegation that agreed to
all of this was none other than the now famous Soviet agent, Alger Hiss.

In court histories and Roosevelt biographies,
we're told that Hiss at Yalta was no big deal-an insignificant figure without
substantive influence on the proceedings. As the archival records show, this is
grossly in error. In fact, Hiss in the Yalta discussions was a ubiquitous and
highly active presence, dealing as a virtual equal with British foreign
secretary Anthony Eden, and speaking out on numerous issues-China prominent
among them-voicing the "State Department" or "United
States" position in backstage meetings.

Scanning these records, it's obvious that
Hiss was far more conversant with issues and events at Yalta than was his
inexperienced nominal chieftain, Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinius Jr.
(all of two months on the job). As with Joe McCarthy, our historians might be advised
to consult the primary data on such matters, rather than re-cycling
Hiss-was-no-problem comment from secondary sources.

Granted, getting at the primary data takes
some digging, as many relevant records have been buried, censored or omitted
from official archives. Presidential secrecy orders, disappearing papers,
folders missing from the files, two manipulated grand juries (that we know of)
used to cover up the extent and nature of the penetration ; all these methods
and more were employed in the 1940s to keep the shocking story from Congress
and the public. And, sad to relate, in some considerable measure the cover up
continues now, in court histories that neglect archival data to repeat once
more the standard narrative of the war years.

Diana West's important book is a valiant
effort to break through this wall of secrecy and selective silence. Her work in
some respects touches on matters beyond my ken-such as Soviet treatment of
American POWs where I am not competent to judge. But on issues where our
researches coincide-and these are many-I find her knowledgeable and on target,
far more so than the conventional histories compared to which she is said to be
found wanting. As the above suggests, her notion of wartime Washington as an
"occupied" city,
and the data that
back it up, are especially cogent.

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