This stunning book, based on KGB archives that have never come to light before,
provides the most complete account of Soviet espionage in America ever written. In 1993,
former KGB officer Alexander Vassiliev was permitted unique access to Stalin-era records
of Soviet intelligence operations against the United States. Years later, living in
Britain, Vassiliev retrieved his extensive notebooks of transcribed documents from Moscow.
With these notebooks John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr have meticulously constructed a
new, sometimes shocking, historical account.
Along with general insights into espionage tactics and the motives of Americans who
spied for Stalin, Spies resolves specific, long-seething controversies. The book confirms,
among many other things, that Alger Hiss cooperated with Soviet intelligence over a long
period of years, that journalist I. F. Stone worked on behalf of the KGB in the 1930s, and
that Robert Oppenheimer was never recruited by Soviet intelligence. Spies also uncovers
numerous American spies who were never even under suspicion and satisfyingly identifies
the last unaccounted for American nuclear spies. Vassiliev tells the story of the
notebooks and his own extraordinary life in a gripping introduction to the volume.
Contents
Preface by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr....................ix
Acknowledgments....................xxi
Conventions for Nomenclature, Citations, Quotations, Cover Names, and
Transliteration....................xxiii
Introduction by Alexander Vassiliev: "How I Came to Write My Notebooks, Discover
Alger Hiss, and Lose to His Lawyer....................xxvii
Chapter 1: Alger Hiss: Case Closed....................1
Chapter 2: Enormous: The KGB Attack on the Anglo-American Atomic
Project....................33
Chapter 3: The Journalist Spies....................145
Chapter 4: Infiltration of the U.S. Government....................195
Chapter 5: Infiltration of the Office of Strategic Services....................293
Chapter 6: The XY Line: Technical, Scientific, and Industrial
Espionage....................331
Chapter 7: American Couriers and Support Personnel....................393
Chapter 8: Celebrities and Obsessions....................431
Chapter 9: The KGB in America: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Structural
Problems....................483
Conclusion....................541
Notes....................549
Index....................638
704 pages,Hardcover