Michael Kimmage To Discuss His Trilling/Chambers Book

April 6, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Cold War, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

I’m still working on getting a copy of Michael Kimmage’s The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism (which I noted in an earlier post) and hope to review it before the end of the month. In the meantime, it’s worth mentioning that Kimmage will discuss his book at Columbia University’s Butler Library this Thursday.

The Most Important Visit

April 1, 2009 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under China, Cold War, Nixon Administration, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

RealClearPolitics has a list of the 10 most important presidential visits to other countries.  If you cannot guess which one came out on top … then you probably stumbled onto this blog by mistake.

A New Chapter In Revisionist History

March 31, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, China, Cold War, Election 2008, Europe, History, International Affairs, News media, Nixon Administration, Obama administration, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Russia, U.S. History, UN, White House | Leave a Comment 

As President Obama travels to Europe to confer with leaders there about how to come to grips with the worldwide recession, Kate Pickert, at Time.com, compares the trip to earlier Presidential travels overseas.

Ms. Pickert is a native of Watertown, New York, and started her career at the Watertown Daily Times, a very highly regarded newspaper; for decades it has been one of the smallest dailies in the country to have a full-time reporter in Washington. The late Alan Emory, who ran its DC bureau from the 1950s to the 1990s, was one of the most respected figures in the Beltway press corps.

Unfortunately, Ms. Pickert seems to have some way to go to fill his shoes.

The reporter starts with a pretty good point – that Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs, at a briefing the day before the President’s departure, was not asked a single question about the trip, since the members of the Fourth Estate present were more concerned about the forced resignation of GM CEO Rick Wagoner. Ms. Pickert notes that days of old “a President could dominate the news by simply leaving the country and posing for some photo ops. Maybe he’d even sneak in some history-making diplomatic feats. Exhibit A: Richard Nixon.”

Yes, she’s talking about the China trip. The round-the-clock TV coverage that event received – the first time all but a handful of Americans had been able to see China up close and personal – was apparently, in the reporter’s mind, equivalent to a series of “photo ops.”

After giving an account of the visit which reads like a condensation of its Wikipedia entry, Ms. Pickert continues:

Nixon’s China trip was successful, but it’s not as if he ended a war. Woodrow Wilson’s trips in 1919 to the Paris Peace Conference, however, led to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the first World War.

Let’s leave aside the perennial debate about the degree to which the terms which Germany had to accept at Versailles, mainly at the insistence of the French government, set the stage for the rise of Hitler and another world war.  The useful point to make here is that, while RN’s visit to the PRC may not have ended a fighting war, it brought one major part of the Cold War – the isolation of China from the United States for nearly a quarter-century – to an end, and thus helped to diminish the possibility of a third world war.

Ms. Pickert goes on to discuss the 1945 Yalta Conference, which she says produced as its “end result [...] the partition of Germany and the creation of the United Nations.” It was the Dunbarton Oaks meeting in 1944 which laid the plans for the founding session of the UN, which took place a few days after Yalta; what FDR accomplished at the Black Sea resort was to get a commitment from Stalin to have the USSR join the UN.

But the really startling paragraph in the article is this one:

Of course, not all presidential trips abroad are known for altering the course of world politics. John F. Kennedy’s 1963 trip to Berlin was notable for the speech expressing support for a free West Germany, but infamous because of the four words he used to drive the point home: “Ich bin ein Berliner,” which can be interpreted to literally mean “I am a jelly-filled doughnut.” Some reports say the statement wasn’t mocked in Berlin at the time, but this hardly matters. In popular memory, Kennedy committed an embarrassing gaffe, something presidents try hard not to do while abroad, where they operate under more scrutiny than usual.

Really. JFK’s speech was “infamous?” Then why does Ms. Pickert think Obama, when a candidate last year, chose Berlin to make his one major appearance outside the US during his campaign – an appearance which drew hundreds of thousands? Why is JFK’s speech so prominently featured in his library in Boston? Why was it one of the highlights of former Nixon White House staffer Bruce Herschensohn’s acclaimed documentary Years Of Lightning, Day Of Drums? Why does the “Berliner” line inspire fond memories in older Europeans to this day, many of whom, I daresay, would regard it as a very significant event of the Cold War?

The Watertown Daily Times article about Ms. Pickert’s hiring by Time states that she has a master’s degree from Columbia. The major is not identified, but I’ve got my doubts that it was American history.

More Sleepless Nights For Elizabeth Drew

March 30, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Cold War, Entertainment, Frost/Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

Last night Stacy Keach completed his run as RN in Frost/Nixon at LA’s Ahmanson Theatre, triumphantly fighting back, in the best Nixonian tradition, to retake the stage after being hospitalized for a week by a mild stroke. Tomorrow through Sunday, he appears with the production at Arizona State University in Tempe. (As was the case with the final weekend at the Ahmanson, understudy Bob Ari will take over as RN for the Saturday and Sunday matinees.)

Yesterday Kerry Lengel of the Arizona Republic interviewed Keach. As he has done in nearly every press interview on this tour, the veteran actor emphasized his belief that Richard Nixon, in the decades since he left the White House, has emerged as a figure as compelling as any in Shakespeare’s tragedies and histories, and just as worthy of portrayal by an actor seeking to reach the heights of his profession. (Or maybe I should add “her” – could it be that one day we might see, say, Meryl Streep or Glenn Close in a Frost/Nixon revival, much as Dame Judith Anderson or Sarah Bernhardt once played Hamlet?)

“Nixon has become an iconic figure, a tragic American figure,” Keach says. “Just as there are many great Hamlets and many great Lears, there are many great Nixons. Anthony Hopkins was a great Nixon. Rip Torn was a great Nixon. So I am adding a notch in my belt in the Nixonian tradition.”

And what does he add to the Nixonian tradition [asks Lengel]?

“I think my contribution is the humor,” [Keach] says. “He’s very engaging, and humor is one of the means of humanizing the character, which is one of Peter Morgan’s objectives.

“This play has done more to rehabilitate Nixon’s image in the world than the original interviews ever could have.”

Indeed, Keach’s temporary departure from the production and his replacement by Ari for a week emphasized, perhaps better than anything else, that playing Nixon is starting to become one of the litmus tests for an actor’s range and capability. The understudy’s performance in the role was examined by Mike Boehm at the Los Angeles Times’s site (“Ari, who was also Frank Langella’s understudy on Broadway, revealed a markedly different take on Nixon than Keach’s: gruffer, deeper-voiced, more raw and less able to disguise the insecurities and disappointments that nag at him”) and at considerable length by Evan Henerson at Examiner.com. That is to say, Ari’s handling of the part received almost the kind of attention at those sites that New York newspapers would have given to the performance of Richard Burton’s understudy in Hamlet in the 1960s had that eminent thespian been laid up for a week.

And, at Canada’s National Post, in the course of a review of Susan Jacoby’s new book on the Alger Hiss case, Philip Marchand suggests a new area of RN’s career for any playwright with the skill and ambition to take it on:

It is strange that Hollywood, which has aimed to make high drama out of such relatively insignificant political events as CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow’s televised attack on Senator Joe McCarthy (Good Night, and Good Luck) and David Frost’s interviews with Richard Nixon (Frost/Nixon), has neglected the story of Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. The 1948 confrontation between the two men — Hiss, the cool, handsome, high-ranking government official, versus Chambers, the talented, scruffy, emotionally erratic, repressed homosexual writer and editor — truly was dramatic.

There was a PBS miniseries back in the 1980s in which Edward Herrmann played Alger Hiss, but it was a rather undistinguished affair. And the story is rather too complex for a 100-minute movie. A carefully constructed 3 1/2 hour play, however, might well be as spellbinding from beginning to end as The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial or Inherit The Wind. Any takers?

Two New Books On Hiss-Chambers

March 25, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Book Review, Cold War, History, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

May 31 marks the 50th anniversary of the start of Alger Hiss’s first trial for perjury, during which the onetime advisor to FDR at Yalta and secretary-general of the founding session of the United Nations in 1945 managed to secure a hung jury, thanks to an all-out attack on his accuser Whittaker Chambers by his attorney Lloyd Paul Stryker. Shortly afterwards, a second trial was held, in which Claude B. Cross, who replaced Stryker at Hiss’s bidding, led the defense. The jury at this trial, given a less dramatic atmosphere, found Hiss guilty and he went to jail, still insisting on his innocence – as he continued to do until he died at age 92.

It has been more than a decade since Hiss’s death and nearly a half-century since Chambers passed away. 2013, four years from now, will see the 100th birthday of Richard Nixon, whose dogged determination to seek the facts of the case helped launch his political career. But in spite of all the decades that have gone by since Chambers appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee and made his charges, the Hiss case still generates strong interest. Indeed, this month sees two new books about its principal figures from America’s two leading university presses.

Yale University Press has just published Alger Hiss and the Battle for History by journalist Susan Jacoby, and it’s reviewed in today’s New York Observer by Glenn C. Altschuler. The writeup is favorable, but I don’t know how keen I am to read the book. Ms. Jacoby is well known for her polemics championing the enlightened center of the political spectrum. Her interpretation of the case, in this context, seems to amount to the argument that sure, all the evidence points to Hiss’s guilt – as has been the general consensus since Allen Weinstein published his definitive book Perjury in 1978 – but the real question is, did the atmosphere of the times prevent Hiss from getting a fair trial? One somewhat wishes Arthur Schlesinger Jr. were still here to point out that Hiss got two trials, rather than the one that most defendants have to get by with, and that every attempt on his part to seek another trial was rejected by one judge after another over the span of three decades, right into the decidedly liberal era of the late 1970s.

A book that interests me rather more is by Michael Kimmage of Catholic University: The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism, which Harvard University Press just released. Former New York Sun book reviewer Adam Kirsch discusses this volume at nextbook.org, and from what he says, it promises to be the most carefully considered examination of Chambers’s pivotal role in American political thought since Sam Tanenhaus’s landmark biography in 1997. Here’s how the HUP site describes it:

Kimmage argues that the divergent careers of these two men exemplify important developments in postwar American politics: the emergence of modern conservatism and the rise of moderate liberalism, crucially shaped by anti-communism. Taken together, these developments constitute a conservative turn in American political and intellectual life—a turn that continues to shape America’s political landscape.

This Time Abe, FDR, And JFK Can’t Help

March 13, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Cold War, History, Obama administration, Presidents, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

During recent remarks to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, President Barack Obama waxed a bit defensive in response to mounting criticism that he may be spreading himself, his vision, and his obvious political capital too thin in these early days of his administration. He is calling for reform in our health care system, the same for education, while ending torture as the bad guys have known it, opening the stem cell floodgates on an ethical slippery slope, while trying to fight two wars and fix a troubled economy. We may be witnessing the birth of the modern octo-presidency.

To his credit he is being very up front about his agenda, not to mention consistent with much of what he campaigned about en route to the presidency. I am sure his actions are being met with enthusiasm by the diehard portion of his electoral constituency. However, I am also quite confident there are some who voted for him who really didn’t expect him to be so aggressive toward the left, but rather to lead more from the center. Wherever that is.

To answer his critics – and those who support him but are somewhat concerned about the potential for early-administration-burn-out – he told the crowd:

I know there’s (sic) some who believe we can only handle one challenge at a time.
They forget that Lincoln helped lay down the transcontinental railroad, passed the Homestead Act, and created the National Academy of Sciences in the midst of Civil War. Likewise, President Roosevelt didn’t have the luxury of choosing between ending a depression and fighting a war. President Kennedy didn’t have the luxury of choosing between civil rights and sending us to the moon. And we don’t have the luxury of choosing between getting our economy moving now and rebuilding it over the long term.

As during the campaign and ever since – and we can assume it will be the same for the foreseeable future – when the going gets tough President Obama pulls out his favorite triumvirate trump card. The names of his historical bff’s Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Kennedy are always near the tip of his eloquent tongue. And why not? After all, they have always been seen as like the coolest presidents ever.

Mr. Obama is, by all accounts, a brilliant guy. Years ago, he was the editor of Harvard Law Review – so he knows a thing or two about something called precedent. What he seems to have missed during his recent speech is that the cases he cites to bolster his argument in favor of him being the multi-tasker-in-chief are not exactly on point.

In fact, when closely examined, they are not relevant at all.

There is no indication that Abraham Lincoln spent any significant time on the railroad issue during the early weeks and months of his presidency as the country was falling apart. In fact, various bills on the subject had been languishing in Congress since the administration of Franklin Pierce, and when Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act into law on July 1, 1862, he had been president for more than a year. Some biographies of our 16th president don’t even mention it. Doris Kearns Goodwin, who wrote Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, devotes part of one single sentence to it in her tome about Honest Abe. I think there are copies of this book around the White House these days; it’s the hot Lincoln book right now. I wonder if anyone looked it up? In fact, the biographer describes the signing ceremony as one where Lincoln signed several bills “rushed through in the final days of the term” of Congress. By the way, he signed the Homestead Act in law during that same quickie ceremony.

Sure life went on and Lincoln had to step away from his number one priority and do other stuff, but nothing got his attention like the raging war.

Then there’s good old Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Mr. Obama tells us that FDR “didn’t have the luxury of choosing between ending a depression and fighting a war.”

Sure he did. He had at least five years and was well into his second term, and dealing with a second Depression of his own making, before he had to begin to seriously look at what was happening in Europe and Asia around 1938. All one has to do is glance at the calendar to note that there was a long gap between his “fear itself” speech and the one that started “Yesterday, December seventh, nineteen-forty-one…”

In fact, a great argument can be made that had it not been for war clouds on the horizon, Mr. Roosevelt might not have been reelected to an unprecedented third term in 1940. The economy was in shambles and the president had recently overreached to try to pack the Supreme Court. World War II saved him politically.

It also cured the Great Depression.

So, Mr. Obama is stretching history some to make it fit his situation when he brings Abe and FDR into the discussion – but what about John F. Kennedy? Well, here again the president swings and misses at a curve, when he was looking for the fastball.

Obama said: “President Kennedy didn’t have the luxury of choosing between civil rights and sending us to the moon.” Yet history tells us that how JFK dealt with these issues, one a long-standing wrong, the other a long-range goal, is not really a precedent our current president should use to enhance his argument.

The fact of the matter is that the space program itself, not to mention the idea of sending a man to the moon, was not something Kennedy had much real passion about. It was never part of his campaign for the presidency. As a senator, he tended to agree with President Eisenhower that the space program was waste of money. It was the chronic and often annoying enthusiasm of Vice President Lyndon Johnson that wore JFK down. Of course, Johnson’s interest had much to do with the fact that NASA was headquartered in Houston, Texas.

When the Russian Yuri Gagarin went into space in April of 1961, it pushed Kennedy’s Cold Warrior buttons. This was, of course, right around the time of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. It is important to note that much of the passion for putting a man on the moon flowed from his desire to beat the Soviets. And John F. Kennedy did not really buy into the idea of it all until shortly before he spoke to Congress on May 25, 1961 about “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”

It was as much political posturing and theater as anything else.

In fact, according to presidential biographer Richard Reeves in President Kennedy: Profile of Power, just two months before his prime-time announcement about going to the moon, Kennedy told James Webb, the head of NASA, “that he had decided against giving new funding to Project Apollo. The American moon project was to be put on hold.”

This is hardly something to compare with some of the “core-Obama-values” stuff our new president is promoting. Kennedy simply used the space program as a Cold War weapon.

How about JFK and civil rights? Surely some would think that Kennedy really worked hard on that one. But again, the record says otherwise. He simply didn’t – at least early on in his administration – have much fire in the belly for the issue. Reeves wrote: “In fact, Kennedy was most concerned about domestic racial troubles as a foreign policy problem. He didn’t want to see the problems give the country a bad name abroad.”

Kennedy’s preoccupation with international affairs is often cited as the reason he was actually, at best, lukewarm on the issue of civil rights during his administration. He was, in the words of author Nick Bryant, “The Bystander” – a leader who squandered opportunities. It would fall to President Lyndon Johnson to follow through, by that time having full access to political capital generated by the emerging Camelot myth.

At any rate, when Mr. Kennedy did begin to step up on the issue of civil rights – as with his address to the nation in June of 1963 – he was more than two years in to his presidency. How this at all relates to President Barack Obama’s ambitious and multi-faceted agenda right now is not clear at all.

I like it when presidents read history. I like it when they quote it. I like it when they learn from it. What I have a problem with is when they get the history wrong.

Seeing All Sides In The Middle East

March 7, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Cold War, Israel and Palestinians, Nixon Administration figures, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

Why the debate over Chas Freeman’s appointment to a top intelligence position is like Cold War attacks on Richard Nixon for being soft on the Soviets.

* * *

A colleague suggests that I shouldn’t neglect charges against Ambassador Freeman that he has financial conflicts of interest that preclude his serving. Andrew Sullivan analyzes the trajectory of the Freeman controversy and shows that it began with outrage over his views. I’m with Sullivan. If there’s a compelling financial question, then it should be judged strictly on its demerits.

Half An Alternative

March 5, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Cold War, Movies, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Richard Nixon and the movies these days — whoa! There’re now almost as many references to “Watchmen” as there were last month to “Frost/Nixon.” From Canada’s Globe and Mail:

Watchmen is set in an alternative 1985, in which the Cold War is still raging and Richard Nixon is still president.

Actually, the Cold War really was still raging in 1985.

Vanity Fair Game

February 12, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Book Review, Cold War, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

In this “Vanity Fair” excerpt from his upcoming book about Reagan and Gorbachev, veteran journalist James Mann, a former LA Times columnist, quotes from a memo former President Nixon wrote to his own file about his April 1987 meeting with President Reagan in the White House family quarters. I called Mann this morning and asked (graciously, I hope) whether a copy of RN’s memcon had somehow ended up in a public archive somewhere, since as far as we know, it’s still in non-deeded post-Presidential files at the Nixon Library. Mann graciously declined to tell me where he’d seen it.

Leon Panetta, Jack Bauer, And The Bad Guys

January 9, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Barack Obama, Book Review, Cold War, Ethics, History, Intelligence, Obama administration, Terrorism, U.S. History, War on Terror | 1 Comment 

This weekend, Jack Bauer returns to save all things great and small during the latest fictional crisis to be played out over one agonizingly long day. No doubt he will be the same old Jack, not a man known for subtlety or nuance. Bullets will fly, some bombs will explode, while others tick away, and the good guys will ultimately prevail.

In a strange and ironic juxtaposition, as faithful viewers begin another seasonal journey with 24, a real-life drama is unfolding, one that involves the appointment of someone who represents ideas as un-like Jack Bauer as possible. President-Elect Barack Obama is tapping old Washington hand Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Panetta is, by all accounts, an able manager and savvy politician – both qualities will certainly help him in this new role. But many have raised questions – serious ones (and not all by Republicans) – about his qualifications for this unique role. I hear the Secretary of Commerce position is open once again, wouldn’t a manager do well there? There is a difference between management and leadership.

It doesn’t take a mind reader to discern that Mr. Obama is determined to tame the CIA and bend it to his will and vision. Not all of his appointments have demonstrated the kind of change he campaigned about, but this one surely does. He is taking a cue from his hero, John F. Kennedy – specifically the JFK who tried to clean the spy house after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Goodbye, Allen Dulles the espionage expert, and hello, John McCone the efficient manager.

Panetta is the new McCone.

The only thing the Leon Panetta appointment and Jack Bauer have in common is the lack-of-subtlety thing. A signal is being sent to the nation and nations. A kinder-gentler sheriff is in town. No more ugly stuff – certainly no hint of torture. And GITMO? Well, we’re going to shut that bad place down and bring its residents to our mainland – maybe even a backyard near you.

Americans are decent people. We understandably flinch and recoil at violence. We deplore senseless killing. We cannot even begin to grasp the fanatical insanity of our Islamist enemies.

But the mistake often made is to assume that others – in places far away and vastly different – think and feel as we do. We regularly and all too predictably underestimate the wickedness and bloodthirsty nature of those who would just as soon wipe us off the face of the planet as look at us. Too many think that people are all basically reasonable and we just need to find some common ground.

Lyndon Johnson used to speculate that if only he could sit down with Ho Chi Minh and promise him some kind of Tennessee Valley Authority-like public works initiative for Vietnam that the communist leader would make peace. But LBJ missed the point that some people are wired differently – especially those who use actual wires tied to bombs.

It is a monumental mistake for anyone on our side to think for a moment that there is any point or place of accommodation that will bring peace, when those we are fighting have a ferocious and fanatical passion for our complete demise.

So – when we telegraph our punches (or better, pull the punch) by putting someone in charge of our major intelligence arm who has long indicated there are some things we will not do in this war, we need to understand that our enemies are not going to be impressed with our “humanity.” Instead, they will know that they have gained an important upper hand in their struggle.

Torture is an ugly word. It is unpleasant and decent people abhor the very idea of it. But, if it is permissible and considered as a necessary evil by a just society to kill terrorists, to bomb them, to send missiles their way, and to otherwise fight them with cruel might, why is torture, under certain circumstances, where we draw the “moral” line?

Years ago, when then heavyweight boxing champ, Muhammad Ali, refused the draft and was stripped of his title, comedian George Carlin (not yet famous) appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and mocked the pugilist. He suggested, humorously, that there was some inconsistency in a case where a man was claiming to be a pacifist who regularly beat people up for a living.

We can’t have it both ways in this current international climate. We can’t profess to fight a war on terror – using violent means. We can’t target enemy leaders for death, launch missiles, or drop bombs to kill terrorists, but say at the same time that we won’t rough up a “detainee” to obtain vital life-saving information. The Panetta appointment is, in effect, a public indication that the new sheriff in town will – as Sean Connery put it in the movie, The Untouchables – be bringing a knife to a gun- fight.

Of course, intelligence work is a murky business. But it is a necessary evil in war. Many are drawing parallels between our times and 1929, when the wheels fell off the economy en route to the Great Depression. There is, however, another interesting comparison between then and now. That year, Henry Stimson – Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of State – shut down a spy operation while uttering the famous and naïve words: “Gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen’s mail.”

It’s a pretty good thing we grew out of that notion – considering what unfolded during the ensuing decades. Stimson meant well, in trying to “civilize” a business that is inherently uncivilized – war. But the time for such tenderness is after the battle is won, not when guns are blazing.

Torture is certainly horrific. But is it at times necessary – in at least some forms? Henry Kissinger once said, “Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.”

It would seem that the important factor is context – in other words, a case-by-case approach is the best way to make such moral judgments. For example, no decent human being would consider torture for the sake of torture (getting sadistic pleasure from inflicting pain) to be morally acceptable under any circumstances. And, even in cases where authorities used torture to obtain a confession in a criminal proceeding – that would be inappropriate and of bounds.

But how about when a “detainee” is believed (strongly believed) to have important information – the kind that, if known, would save the lives of civilians or military personnel?

Former Chief of CIA Counterintelligence, James M. Olson, has written an excellent book about all of this – one every American concerned about this issue should read. In Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying, he traces the history of espionage back to the days of the Bible and beyond. With an intelligence career that included assignments in Moscow, Vienna, and Mexico City during the Cold War, he knew first hand of the challenges and issues of conscience spy work involves.

Now serving in a key academic post at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, he teaches about intelligence and national security issues.

In the book, Mr. Olson describes various scenarios – some involving the potential use of methods considered by some to be torturous. He has interviewed leaders from several walks of life – from intelligence agents, to clergymen, to professors, even someone from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – and chronicles their opinions.

Torture is just one of many methodologies Olson analyzes – others include: journalism cover, homosexual blackmail, kidnapping, truth serum, missionary cover, feeding a drug habit, bogus websites and chat rooms, – even plagiarizing a Ph.D. Dissertation. For anyone interested in the moral implications of intelligence work in a dangerous world, Fair Play is a must-read (originally published in 2006, it is now out in paperback).

Olson concedes “spying is a dirty business,” but asks: “Should we put all our trust in overt sources of information, diplomacy, and the peaceful arts – and hope are enemies will not take advantage of us?”

At a time when a highly and fanatically motivated enemy is watching and waiting to strike at the heart of all we hold dear, Mr. Obama seems to be sending the clear, unmistakable, and potentially ominous signal that the CIA is an entity to be managed and tempered.

I am sure radical Islamists worldwide are going to be very impressed. But I find myself earnestly hoping that we keep a few guys like Jack Bauer around – just in case.

Castro/Nixon

December 30, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Cold War, Cuba, Richard Nixon | 3 Comments 

As the Cuban government celebrates the proud achievement of perpetuating Stalinism for 50 years, a reprise of a couple of my New Nixon blog entries from early 2008, as Fidel passed the fatigues to Raul. The first, posted on Feb. 23, was written after a distinguished journalist tried to lay what he characterized as the failure of U.S. policy at the feet of you-know-who:

In this NPR commentary, Daniel Schorr (a distinguished reporter and commentator and regular participant in Nixon Center programs in Washington) argues that 50 years of misguided U.S. policy toward Cuba began when Vice President Nixon, after meeting Fidel Castro, said he was “incredibly naive about communism.” Schorr implies that every misstep in U.S. Cuba policy, from the Bay of Pigs invasion to the Kennedy Administration’s assassination schemes, grew from RN’s observation. That’s hard to believe based on Mr. Nixon’s complete analysis, contained in a long memo he sent President Eisenhower after meeting alone with Castro for three hours in April 1959:

Whatever we may think of him he is going to be a great factor in the development of Cuba and very possibly in Latin American affairs generally. He seems to be sincere. He is either incredibly naive about communism or under Communist discipline — my guess is the former, and as I have already implied his ideas as to how to run a government or an economy are less developed that those of almost any world figure I have met in 50 countries. But because he has the power to lead to which I have referred, we have no choice but at least to try to orient him in the right direction.

When Castro argued that his people didn’t want free elections because they’d produced bad results in the past, Mr. Nixon replied that he should therefore hold elections as soon as possible “to restore the faith of the people in the democratic processes.” Castro soon demonstrated that he had no interest in redeeming Cuban democracy. As for the naive faith in communism Mr. Nixon identified, it laid waste to Cuba’s economy and turned it into Moscow’s pawn (and a potential ground zero) in the missile crisis of 1962.

Mr. Nixon acknowledged the force of Castro’s personality, predicted his regional influence, and tried to persuade him to serve his people. How could he have done better?

 Too late for W. An opportunity for O?

The Spy Who Really Came In From the Cold

December 17, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Book Review, Cold War, History, Russia, U.S. History | 2 Comments 

Several years ago, David Cornwell (better known by his nom de plume, John Le Carré) told an interviewer that, “espionage was not really something exclusive and clandestine. It was actually the currency of the Cold War. Spies were the poor bloody infantry of the Cold War.”

They still are – though these days we are in a different war and battling another pernicious ideology.

Cold War spy novels make for entertaining reading, but the more we learn about the nuts and bolts of what actually went on back then, the more we come to understand that truth is in many ways even more dramatic than fiction.

Consider, for example, the case of Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski. He was a Polish patriot who may have saved his nation, the whole continent of Europe – maybe even the world – from massive suffering at the hands of a Soviet war machine once poised to race from behind Warsaw Pact borders to the Atlantic Ocean.

I recently attended a symposium at Langley on the life and work of this remarkable unsung hero who risked life, limb, and loved ones to pass along vital information at a crucial moment during the Cold War.

Under the watchful eye of CIA Director General Michael V. Hayden, and as part of a very real “social-contract” with this country, voluminous de-classified materials are being made available to researchers and the public at large. General Hayden was a history major back in college days and has not lost his love for thorough and informed analysis of the past. This passion has clearly informed his directorate.

The most recent historical symposium corresponded with the release of materials relating to Rsyzard Kuklinski and his work on our behalf, but especially that of his beloved Poland. In fact, Kuklinski, who died in 2004, did not see himself as working for “us” – rather he consciously recruited America, via the CIA, to work on behalf of Polish freedom during a dark and difficult time.

In August of 1972, Kuklinski sent a letter to the U.S. Embassy in Bonn, West Germany, establishing contact with our intelligence operatives. Signing it “P.V.” (later Kuklinski said this stood for “Polish Viking”), this singular act began a relationship that would bear the fruit of literally thousands of vital documents and crucial information helping us to understand Soviet doctrine and intent.

The definitive account of the Polish spy’s fascinating story is a book written by Benjamin Weiser, a reporter for the New York Times, entitled, A Secret Life: The Polish Officer, His Covert Mission, and the Price He Paid to Save His Country. Rsyzard Kuklinski is described at the time of his espionage work as “a small man with tousled hair, penetrating blue eyes and the gestures and mannerisms of a man within whom an unbounded supply of energy is bottled up.” He focused that energy on doing everything he could to prevent his country from being sacrificed during the Cold War, as it had been in so many ways during the Second World War.

Kuklinski was motivated by patriotic fear. His role as a high-ranking staff officer made him privy to information about what a major Soviet offensive in Europe would mean. Though always framed via lip service as “defensive” in nature, the Soviet and Warsaw Pact war plans, in fact, were entirely designed to be offensive operations.

The salient point, as far as Kuklinski was concerned, had to do with the so-called Second Strategic Echelon – a massive potential Soviet offensive involving roughly 2 million soldiers and at least a million armored vehicles. Rsyzard and others in a place to know about these plans discerned accurately that the only real response NATO forces would have to counter such a massive Soviet mobilization would be nuclear.

And those bombs would drop, not in Moscow, nor in Western Europe – rather they would obliterate Poland – the perpetual 20th century European pawn.

In fact, the materials passed to us by this highly effective Cold War spy enabled the United States and NATO to effectively plan for such a scenario. And the other guys never knew we had the information.

But even beyond the role he played for us strategically, he also became our eyes and ears during those turbulent months (1980) as the world watched a fledgling political movement known as Solidarity, led by Lech Walesa, begin to achieve political traction in Poland. The world also wondered if and when the Soviets (with the complicity of their puppets in charge of things in Warsaw) would intervene as they had in Budapest (1956) and Prague (1968). It seemed like only a matter of time.

Rsyzard Kuklinski was uniquely positioned in those days to report on what was going on – enabling us, in the waning days of the Carter presidency, to effectively warn the Soviets off. At one point, he sent a 16-page letter to the CIA describing high-level meetings of the Polish government where the discussion included the potential for a Soviet invasion of their country.

And the next year, 1981, as it became clear that the Polish government led by General Wojciech Jaruzelski, was preparing to declare martial law in the land, Kuklinski kept us informed in great detail. He despised Jaruzelski, writing in one covert dispatch that the strongman was “unworthy of the name Pole.”

In a dramatic moment on November 2, 1981, Rsyzard Kuklinski was summoned to a meeting in the office of one of his bosses. Six men sat at a T-shaped table and learned that there was a “mole” among them – someone had been leaking information to the Americans. Somehow managing to keep his composure, Kuklinski joined the chorus of voices in the room denouncing such an act of “treason.”

But he knew his days were numbered and soon found a way to communicate to his handlers: “I urgently request instructions for evacuating from the country myself and my family. Please take into consideration that the state border is possibly already closed for me and my family.”

For several days, CIA personnel in Warsaw tried to carry out a plan to evacuate Rsyzard, his wife, and their two sons. Eventually they were spirited away for the long drive to Berlin. I spoke with the driver during a reception near the famed CIA floor seal in Langley’s lobby, and he told me that they managed to get through three checkpoints en route – though acknowledging he still gets chills when thinking about that perilous trip – even 27 years later.

Life in America was no picnic for this Cold War hero and his family. They had to live under an assumed identity and avoid relationships, particularly with Polish-Americans, for years. The two Kuklinski sons met with untimely accidental deaths less than a year apart, breaking the hearts of mom and dad. Questions were raised about the nature of the deaths – one in a boating accident (the body never found) – the other on a college campus, felled by a hit-and-run driver. But no evidence (beyond the circumstantial) was ever discovered that pointed to anything conspiratorial or sinister.

Rsyzard Kuklinski was tried in absentia in 1984 in Poland, found guilty of treason, and sentenced to death. After the Cold War ended, his sentence was commuted to 25 years (something that hurt Kuklinski deeply). In 1995, the chief justice of the Polish Supreme Court annulled his sentence. Then in September of 1997, all charges against him were revoked, enabling him to return to Poland a free man.

In April-May 1998, Rsyzard Kuklinski made an 11-day tour of several Polish cities. He was greeted by some as a hero – on a level with Pope John Paul II. Others, however, protested that he was – and would remain – a traitor.

Lech Walesa, for all his good work in the cause of freedom, never completely accepted Kuklinski’s account of things – even suggesting publicly that Rsyzard was a “double-agent” working for the Soviets, as well as the Americans. No such evidence exists – in fact, as new information comes out the case being made that Kuklinski was a Polish patriot and one of the good guys gets stronger and stronger. But Walesa’s remarks highlight the tension when “state” becomes synonymous with “country.”

Frankly, Rsyzard Kuklinski’s work – his willingness to risk it all for what he believed was right – left the world a better place. The Soviet Union eventually fell apart and freedom broke out in his beloved Poland. Neither would have happened had Warsaw Pact nations acted on clearly defined plans for continental – even global – hegemony.

When Kuklinski died in February of 2004, then Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet said: “This passionate and courageous man helped keep the Cold War from becoming hot, providing the CIA with precious information upon which so many critical national security decisions rested. And he did so for the noblest of reasons – to advance the sacred causes of liberty and peace in his homeland and throughout the world.”

Long before that, Rsyzard Kuklinski reflected, “I am pleased that our long, hard struggle has brought peace, freedom, and democracy not only to my country but to many other people as well.”

So are we.

Hey, Ron: How About “Moorer/Nixon”?

December 16, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Cold War, Frost/Nixon, Richard Nixon, Vietnam, Watergate | 4 Comments 

During 1969-73, before he was consumed by Watergate, Richard Nixon redrafted the geopolitical map, repositioning the United States in relationship to the Soviet Union and China and helping usher in the global era. His administration also conducted secret talks with the North Vietnamese in the hope of bringing U.S. involvement in Indochina to an honorable end.

These initiatives and others made Pentagon hawks so nervous that they spied on the President and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. Papers illegally stolen from the White House over a 13-month period by a Navy yeoman were passed up the line to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Thomas Moorer, who eventually admitted he’d read them without inquiring too aggressively where they’d come from. The thefts were uncovered by the famed White House Plumbers, figures of fun for most historians, little-sung heroes in this case.

New details about the Radford affair, which struck at the heart of the concept of civilian authority over the military, are revealed in an article by Fox News’s James Rosen, author of a remarkable new biography of John Mitchell whose new insights about Watergate and John Dean, though startling, didn’t merit a review in the New York Times.

Perhaps for some of the same reasons, Radford never got as much as attention as Watergate. Those who like to say that Mr. Nixon was undermining the Constitution have never seemed exercised about the tunnel the brass were busy digging under the White House. As “Frost/Nixon” shows, Nixon as sinner is potentially big box office. When he was sinned against? Rarely green lighted.

One reason may be that for the sake of the military’s credibility, the President chose not to make more of the affair. According to Rosen, here’s how he put it on one of the tapes:

“Admiral Moorer,” Nixon told an aide in May 1973, “I could have screwed him on that and been a big hero, you know. I could have screwed the whole Pentagon about that damn thing … Why didn’t I do it? Because I thought more of the services.”

A One Time Only Invention

December 9, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Book Review, China, Cold War, History, Science | Leave a Comment 

In today’s New York Times, veteran science correspondent William A. Broad previews two new books that combine to do some rewriting —or at least some major revision— of the atomic history.

The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation by Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman and The Bomb: A New History, by Stephen M. Younger are both based on extensive research supplemented by insider insight and information.  And both conclude that the atom bomb was only invented once — by the scientists of the Manhattan Project led by J. Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

The proliferation that now plagues the world is the result of spying that leaked the secrets and national policy or ideological interests that spread the technology.  A striking graphic charts the claim.

All paths stem from the United States, directly or indirectly. One began with Russian spies that deeply penetrated the Manhattan Project. Stalin was so enamored of the intelligence haul, Mr. Reed and Mr. Stillman note, that his first atom bomb was an exact replica of the weapon the United States had dropped on Nagasaki.

Moscow freely shared its atomic thefts with Mao Zedong, China’s leader. The book says that Klaus Fuchs, a Soviet spy in the Manhattan Project who was eventually caught and, in 1959, released from jail, did likewise. Upon gaining his freedom, the authors say, Fuchs gave the mastermind of Mao’s weapons program a detailed tutorial on the Nagasaki bomb. A half-decade later, China surprised the world with its first blast.

 “Since the birth of the nuclear age,” they write, “no nation has developed a nuclear weapon on its own, although many claim otherwise.”

Among other things, the book details how secretive aid from France and China helped spawn five more nuclear states.

The book, in a main disclosure, discusses how China in 1982 made a policy decision to flood the developing world with atomic know-how. Its identified clients include Algeria, Pakistan and North Korea.

Two of the major sources, and resources, for nuclear proliferation have been China and France.

Why did Beijing spread its atomic knowledge so freely? The authors speculate that it either wanted to strengthen the enemies of China’s enemies (for instance, Pakistan as a counterweight to India) or, more chillingly, to encourage nuclear wars or terror in foreign lands from which Beijing would emerge as the “last man standing.”

A lesser pathway involves France. The book says it drew on Manhattan Project veterans and shared intimate details of its bomb program with Israel, with whom it had substantial commercial ties. By 1959, the book says, dozens of Israeli scientists “were observing and participating in” the French program of weapons design.

The book adds that in early 1960, when France detonated its first bomb, doing so in the Algerian desert, “two nations went nuclear.” And it describes how the United States turned a blind eye to Israel’s own atomic developments. It adds that, in the autumn of 1966, Israel conducted a special, non-nuclear test “2,600 feet under the Negev desert.” The next year it built its first bomb.

Israel, in turn, shared its atomic secrets with South Africa. The book discloses that the two states exchanged some key ingredients for the making of atom bombs: tritium to South Africa, uranium to Israel. And the authors agree with military experts who hold that Israel and South Africa in 1979 jointly detonated a nuclear device in the South Atlantic near Prince Edward Island, more than one thousand miles south of Cape Town. Israel needed the test, it says, to develop a neutron bomb.

 

Catch-2008

November 20, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Cold War, Economic issues, Election 2008, Entertainment, Humor, Nixon Administration figures, Obama administration, Sarah Palin, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Erica Heller is a New Yorker in her fifties.  In her twenties and thirties she worked in advertising. Then she dropped out of the field and wrote a novel, Splinters - a natural thing to do when one is the daughter of the late Joseph Heller, author of Something Happened, God Knows, Good As Gold, and that all-time bestselling antiwar novel Catch-22. 

Splinters was published in 1990 and, unlike most of her father’s books, was not well-received; Publishers Weekly called it “pretentious and self-indulgent.”  So Ms. Heller went back to advertising, where she remains.  Recently she began blogging on The Huffington Post.  Just before election day, she wrote there that her father – who, she acknowledged, never voted in any election in his life, because he was, by his own admission, “anti-political” – would surely have trooped down to the booth, were he still living, to choose Sen. Barack Obama. 

 (That strikes me as doubtful. Heller, a very shrewd fellow as his many interviews attest, would have likely foreseen that doing so would help bring about the situation this week where Dr. Henry Kissinger, the target of innumerable venomous barbs in Good As Gold, expressed his support for the President-elect’s choosing Sen. Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State.)

This week, Ms. Heller, perhaps like many another writer with an Amazon sales ranking in the low seven digits, is on the warpath about the book deals being rumored for Gov. Sarah Palin and secured by Joe the Plumber.  She seems convinced that S. J. Wurzelbacher is receiving a fortune from a small press for his book.  In fact, what Joe is earning is probably just a shade above the $1000 or so her dad got for what was then Catch-18 nearly a half-century ago, and far below the advances for every other book he wrote. 

 Ms Heller also fulminates about the $7 million that’s being tossed around where the Palin book is concerned, bemoaning all the trees that will fall to make it.  Well, President Clinton was paid considerably better for his memoirs.  And a lot of trees fell to get it to the stores.  And, most strikingly of all, that rather soporific tome was edited by none other than Robert Gottlieb, the brilliant editor who helped make Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 a classic.  (I should point out Mr. Gottlieb always has my admiration.  Imagine being in one’s late seventies and fielding 3 am calls from the man who remains the First Night Owl, not to mention trying to get Robert Caro to finish those last thousand pages of his LBJ saga.)

Most bizarre of all is an aside where Ms. Heller reminisces about the good old days when Catch-22 is published and in which the series Mad Men is set.  She reminds us that back when Roger Maris was earning his asterisk, gas was 33 cents a gallon and stamps were four cents.  Well, guess what?  If her liberal idols in Congress and the White House can’t figure out how to get us out of the recession and deflation sets in, prices may drop to those levels again.  The difference will be that you won’t see too many people wearing clothes as good as the ones in Mad Men.  On the bright side, there will be plenty of free grass, growing up from the sidewalks, and in some places from the floorboards.

Speaking of Robert Gottlieb, time for me to tell my favorite story about his many quirks.  A friend of mine – we’ll call him Hank, because his first name’s the same as Gottlieb’s – was in the early ’60s an up-and-coming editor, as Gottlieb was.  One day he got a call from his colleague.  “Come over for lunch,” quoth young Bob.  His habit, then as now, was always to eat a sandwich at his own desk at Simon & Schuster (and, later, Knopf), so Hank stopped at an Italian deli, got some antipasto, and proceeded to S&S’s offices.

This particular afternoon, incidentally, was a day or two after JFK’s speech announcing the presence of Russian missiles in Cuba.  Things were pretty weird in Manhattan all around. Even so, Hank was a bit surprised, when he arrived at Bob’s office, to find it unoccupied.  Assuming that the editor was in the restroom, he waited a while in the hallway.  Then he asked Gottlieb’s secretary where he was.  “In there – he hasn’t left all day,” she replied.

So Hank stepped in and approached his friend’s desk.  There came a whisper – from under it. “That you, Hank?”  Hank stepped around and found Gottlieb crouched underneath, sandwich in hand. “I talked to my shrink this morning – he sounded kinda worried,” Bob said by way of explanation. “There’s some space here – sit down.” So Hank squeezed in and took out the antipasto.  “Just a second,” said Bob. He then emerged from the desk, went to the window, lowered the blinds, and got back under.  Thus suitably protected from the threat of The Big One – in an office in the midsection of a skyscraper in midtown Manhattan – the two young editors dined and chatted as usual.

Ah, those wild, crazy days of Mad Men.

McCain’s Solomon Moment

September 25, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Cold War, Democratic Party, Election 2008, History, Presidents, Republican Party, U.S. History | 2 Comments 

For much of the 20th century, the Blackstone Hotel, located at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Balboa Street in Chicago, was known as the “hotel of the presidents.” The 21-story facility, recently renovated by the Marriott people with a price tag of 128 million dollars, has long been listed on local and national registers of historic places.

The Blackstone was where the legendary political phrase “smoke-filled room” entered the American vocabulary. It was a description of where and how Warren Harding’s Republican presidential nomination was decided in 1920. Harry Truman was staying there when he was picked to be the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 1944, as was Dwight D. Eisenhower when he was notified that the GOP had nominated him on the first ballot in 1952.

The most dramatic Blackstone presidential moment, however, took place on the morning of Saturday, October 20, 1962. Hours before, after a long day on the campaign trail for local politicos, President John F. Kennedy sipped clam chowder in his suite and decided to return to the White House rather than continue his tour. Having made a speech in Chicago, he was scheduled to go to Milwaukee – then out to the west coast to work on behalf of several Democratic candidates.

The fact that the Soviets were installing offensive missiles in Cuba, which had been kept pretty much below media radar for several days, was about to become a very public national crisis. Things were reaching critical mass.

By breakfast time, Secret Service agents were sweeping the lobby, along with every nook and cranny in the common areas of the historic hotel. At mid-morning, Mr. Kennedy emerged from an elevator, adorned with an overcoat and rarely worn hat, and walked briskly though the lobby toward the main door and his limousine.

Less than 24 hours before, he had entered the hotel through the same door after seeing a protest sign calling for, “Less Profile – More Courage.” There were no such signs this morning though, few even knew that Lancer would be on the move – not even the press. Reporters, many of whom were already on busses ready to go to Milwaukee, were informed that the president had a cold and a slight fever and was heading back to Washington on the advice of his doctor.

The collective response of the press was, “yeah right.”

This mysterious malady was apparently quite contagious, even leaping several time zones, because Vice President Lyndon Johnson was similarly afflicted and also leaving the campaign trail. He flew that day from Honolulu back to the nation’s capital.

JFK and LBJ knew a thing or two about politics and governing. They understood with Solomon-like wisdom that, “there is a time to campaign, and a time to break off campaigning.”

It’s a leadership thing.

John McCain was right to do what he did recently when he announced the temporary suspension of his presidential campaign and returned to the Senate. Barack Obama was caught flat-footed and, one suspects, a little upset that he didn’t think of it first. Both men are sitting U.S. Senators. In a campaign famous for chronic discussions about experience and preparation for the job they seek, one way to size these men up is to watch how they actually do the jobs they already have.

Mr. Obama has suggested that John McCain’s decision indicates an inability to multi-task. But that dog won’t hunt. The issue is not whether or not a person can do two or more things at once – as both men clearly can. The real question is – are there circumstances that loom so large, that become so compelling, that transcend the times in such a way as to call for unusual, even unprecedented, attention and action?

Of course, the answer is yes.

This is clearly a time for such action and leadership. What is more presidential – making a stump speech, participating in a debate, or actually taking some time away from center stage to do a job one has already been elected to do?

John McCain instinctively gets that. Barack Obama does not.

If President Bush were at his ranch in Crawford, or on some foreign farewell tour, or doing some other ceremonial president-stuff, both candidates would be rightly calling for his return to Washington to deal with the crisis at hand.

On September 11, 2001, the local election campaign in New York City stopped. It became instantly insignificant in light of the horrific developments of that day. Politics went away – leadership kicked in. We need that kind of gut-level “work the problem” approach from both of the men running for president this year.

Frankly, we can learn more about a potential president by the response to real problems, than we can by the response to a question in a debate. McCain and Obama are already elected officials. One way to demonstrate that you can do a bigger job is to be faithful and diligent in your current assignment.

If Mr. Obama does not see the need to at least go through the motions of working with the Senate on the bailout package President Bush has sent to congress, then he should resign his seat – and let the citizens of Illinois get someone to Washington who will condescend to a role that Barack may see these days as an annoyance.

Barack Obama needs to move beyond trying to one-up John McCain, who is clearly skilled at keeping an opponent off-balance by not telegraphing his punches. He may need to ask himself what his hero, JFK, would do. Kennedy understood that sometimes a campaign has to take a back seat to a crisis.

It might also be good for Mr. Obama to figure out that a wise leader not only comes up with good ideas, but is also capable of recognizing value in those developed by others – even political opponents.

The Left’s Second Thoughts On The Rosenbergs

September 21, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Cold War, History, National Security, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

In recent days interest in the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted on Federal espionage charges in the early 1950s and sent to the electric chair, has been revived after Morton Sobell, the last living defendant charged (and convicted) with them, acknowledged to Sam Roberts of the New York Times that he and Julius Rosenberg had in fact spied for the Soviet Union. In the Week In Review section of today’s Times there is a very illuminating article by Roberts discussing how widespread belief in the innocence of the Rosenbergs has affected the whole direction of the American political left since 1953, and how some of the notable figures in that movement are reacting to Sobell’s admission.

Those quoted in the article include E.L. Doctorow, the writer who first made a major impact with his novel The Book Of Daniel, based on the Rosenberg case (and later adapted into a film directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Timothy Hutton); pre-eminent leftist historian Howard Zinn (who says, “I never was going along saying I know they were innocent, and I’m not shocked by the fact they turned out to be spies. To me it didn’t matter if they were guilty or not, the most important thing was they did not get a fair trial”) ; SDS founder Tom Hayden; longtime Nation editor and publisher Victor Navasky; and Leonard J. Lehrman, co-director of the National Committee To Reopen The Rosenberg Case.

The End has Come

September 17, 2008 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Cold War, Russia | Leave a Comment 

Ron Radash writes today in the LA Times that the controversial debate surrounding the Rosenberg case is a fait accompli. In a recent confession, co-defendant Morton Sobell has re-affirmed the couple’s guilt, a development that should bury any inkling of national guilt brought on by their left-wing supporters.

Hiss And The Rosenbergs In Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

September 16, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Cold War, History, National Security, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Bob Hoover, the book-review editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (and, thus, belonging to a breed now perhaps more rare than the ivory-billed woodpecker) has written an article for that paper concerning Sam Roberts’ recent New York Times stories about the Rosenberg case, in which he also discusses the lingering echoes through the decades of the saga of Alger Hiss.  Included are several quotes from G. Edward White, author of Alger Hiss’s Looking-Glass Wars. Well worth reading.

The Spy Who Almost Stayed In The Cold, and RIP DFW

September 13, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Cold War, Culture, History, In Memoriam | 2 Comments 

The London Times has just published a lengthy interview, conducted by the paper’s Rod Liddle, with renowned British spy novelist (and former MI6 agent) John Le Carre. He spends most of it reiterating his anger, often manifested in his recent statements and writings, regarding neoconservatism and the war in Iraq. But there is one rather startling item:

And then there are the things [Le Carre] didn’t do but perhaps almost did – such as defecting to the Soviet Union when he worked for MI6. This is the sort of confidence I hadn’t expected, to tell you the truth.

“You were genuinely tempted?” I ask him, in some surprise.

“Yes, there was a time when I was, yes,” he says.

“For ideological reasons, like the rest of them – Blunt, Philby, Maclean?”

Le Carré is considered to be on the left these days, of course – a consensus arrived at largely through his visceral dislike of recent US foreign policy. One of that coterie of British literary greats – Pinter, Hare, Amis – railing at the supposed cretin in the White House, snarling about rendition and Guantanamo and Halliburton. Surely, though, he was not that far to the left, back then?

“God, no, no, no. Never for ideological reasons, of course not . . . ” “Then why?” Not money, surely, I think to myself.

“Well, I wasn’t tempted ideologically,” he reasserts, in case there should be any doubt, “but when you spy intensively and you get closer and closer to the border . . . it seems such a small step to jump . . . and, you know, find out the rest.”

Further on in the interview, Le Carre notes that in 1987 he was offered a chance to dine with the most notorious defector in espionage annals, Kim Philby – the model for the character Gerald in his own novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and the man who blew Le Carre’s cover to the Soviets and forced him out of espionage and into writing about it - not long before the latter’s death, but declined the opportunity because he did not want to meet the man responsible for the deaths of dozens of British agents sent into Albania in the 1940s.

In sadder literary news, David Foster Wallace (known to his legions of fans by his initials), the fiction writer, MacArthur fellow, and professor at Pomona College, author of the brain-bendingly complex (but widely acclaimed) thousand-page novel Infinite Jest, was found dead in his Claremont home Friday night, an apparent suicide at the age of 46.

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