Historians Gather Evidence about Cold War Spies

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990/1991, historians have worked to reconstruct information about the massive intelligence network which the USSR operated inside the United States. Although the earliest traces of that network date back as far as 1919, the large-scale espionage efforts began in the 1930s.

Historians have gathered data from multiple sources about the Soviet spy network. The United States Army was able, by means of its Operation Venona, to intercept and decode a number of encrypted messages between Moscow and communist operatives in America.

Other sources of information include files from various intelligence agencies: files which were declassified and made accessible to the public once the Cold War had ended.

But some of the biggest sources of evidence about Soviet intelligence-gathering inside the United States are the files and archives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Historians Stan Evans and Herbert Romerstein write:

Of importance also — though an underrated resource — are the confidential archives of the FBI, which was tracking and recording the activities of Communists and Soviet agents in the United States before Venona came on line and before the advent of the Cold War. In some recent studies the efforts of the FBI in this regard have been disparaged, but, on close inspection, these negative comments aren’t backed up by the record. In some cases of the New Deal years the Bureau may have missed clues it should have noted, but by the early 1940s it was far ahead of other U.S. agencies in spotting and combating the infiltration problem.

From these data, it is clear not only that the Soviet espionage network inside the United States was massive, and that it was highly effective at sending classified secrets back to the Kremlin, but also that it exerted a subtle but significant pressure on U.S. policymakers.

Not only did the Soviet have access to confidential information, but they also were influencing decisions made inside the U.S. government by means of well-placed secret agents.

Some of those agents, like Alger Hiss, worked at the highest levels of government: Hiss had face-to-face meetings with the president.

The President of the United States was taking advice from a communist spy!

Bunny Berigan, Jazz Pioneer

A highly skilled trumpeter and an engaging vocalist, Bunny Berigan was a successful recording artist in the 1930s, a representative of the era’s jazz movement. He was also popular on the concert circuit.

Having played with both Benny Goodman’s band and Tommy Dorsey’s band, Berigan moved on to do some solo and freelance work in 1935/1946, and to become the leader of his own band in 1937.

One of his most famous recordings was a song titled, “I Can’t Get Started,” written by Ira Gershwin and Vernon Duke. The song was written in 1936, but received little attention until Berigan’s recording of it became wildly popular.

Berigan’s emergence into national prominence was facilitated by his personal acquaintance with the leading jazz artists of his era, as historian Richard Sudhalter writes:

In early 1928 Berigan landed a job at Janssen’s Hofbrau restaurant in Philadelphia, with a band led by singer-violinist Frank Cornwell; they rehearsed in New York, affording the young brassman his first contact with a circle of musicians he’d soon come to dominate. He met cornetist Rex Stewart, who in turn introduced him to others, including Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey.

Jazz was already an established category of music by the time Berigan started his career, but has often been the case in the history of jazz, experimentation and development were common, and Berigan was no exception to this pattern. He was an innovator.

There were several trumpeters in the 1930s who displayed technical excellence. But Berigan was a master not only of technique, but rather also of artistic impression, as Sudhalter explains:

But it's hard to imagine any of those men, however accomplished, inspiring talk of “something special in the magic department.” Berigan, then, can't be understood as simply an amalgam of skills and attributes. There is another di­mension; even his less distinguished recorded work exudes a sense of something transcendental, unmatched by any other trumpet soloist of the 1930s.

Sadly, Berigan died at the age of 33 in 1942. Despite his premature death, his recordings remain popular almost a century after his performances.

Venona and Beyond

When historians explore the amazingly extensive network of spies which the Soviet Union planted inside the United States, one of the chief sources about this espionage is the Venona project.

The Venona files were a large set of decryptions which various U.S. intelligence agencies, mainly inside the U.S. Army, were able to intercept and decode as Soviet agents inside the the U.S. sent encrypted messages to their supervisors inside America and in Moscow.

Soviet intelligence operations started in the United States as early as 1919, but reached full force in the 1930s. A network of operatives was in constant contact with the Kremlin, sending data to Moscow, and receiving instructions about how to influence U.S. policies.

Although representing a massive amount of evidence, the Venona decrypts were far from the only data about the international communist conspiracy and its activity in America, as historians Stan Evans and Herbert Romerstein write:

Other revelations dating from the 1990s include material from the archives of the Soviet Union and other east bloc nations when for a brief period after the Communists were toppled from power such records were made available to researchers. The most recent such disclosures are the so-called Vassiliev papers, named for a former Soviet intelligence staffer who made voluminous copies of secret records and smuggled them out of Russia when he defected to the West. Similar revelations had been made by previous such defectors, including Oleg Gordievsky, Stanislav Levchenko, and Victor Kravchenko, along with native American defectors such as Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley.

Both Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley had worked for the Communist Party (CPUSA) in the United States, which was not a political party at all, but rather a terrorist organization, plotting to send secret military information to Moscow, plotting to influence American policymakers to act not in the best interests of U.S. citizens but rather to the advantage of the USSR, and plotting to eventually use even ‘violent’ methods to overthrow the U.S. government.

The CPUSA had explicitly used the word ‘violent’ in its description of the revolution which it hoped to instigate inside the United States.

After the end of the Cold War, and after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990/1991, the various sources of data revealed that the extent of the communist espionage network inside the United States was far larger than anyone had previously imagined.

Uncovering Evidence of Soviet Spies

Starting shortly after the two revolutions of 1917, and after the conclusion of a civil war several years later, the USSR began to assemble and expand an international communist conspiracy, the goal of which was to topple governments in noncommunist countries and establish socialist dictatorships.

Starting as early as 1919, such efforts in the United States reached high levels in the 1930s, and were significantly active for several decades thereafter.

The Soviet espionage network inside the United States was shockingly expansive, and astonishingly effective. A single example suffices: Alger Hiss was a communist operative, and was also a direct advisor to President Roosevelt.

Hiss influenced Roosevelt’s policy-making activities. Some of FDR’s decisions toward the end of his presidency were not in the best interests of the United States, nor in the best interests of its allies, but were advantageous to the USSR.

Hiss’s infiltration becomes all the more surprising when one understands that he was not acting alone, but was part of a large network, and part of a chain of command that led ultimately to Moscow and to Stalin.

How do we know about these Soviet agents? Much of the evidence was not available until the collapse of the Soviet Union around 1990/1991, as historians Stan Evans and Herbert Romerstein write:

Among the information sources now available on such matters, those most often cited are the Venona decrypts compiled by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in the 1940s. Venona was the codename given to encrypted messages exchanged between the Red intelligence bosses in Moscow and their agents in this country. The Army codebreakers intercepted thousands of these missives and by a painstaking process were able to decipher a substantial number. This information, reflecting the extent of the Soviets’ activities in the United States and the identities of many of their contacts, was shared by the Army with the FBI to counter and eventually help break various of the pro-Red networks. These decrypts weren’t made public until 1995, half a century after they were first recorded.

To be sure, some data was available even before the end of the Cold War. Much of that was uncovered and publicized by Congress.

In addition to the Venona intercepts, there were files from the KGB, from the East German Stasi, and from the private records of former Soviet agents who defected to the western nations.

In the United States, some records from the FBI and other agencies were declassified and made public after the end of the Cold War.

Although not all the data is now available, and some of it may be lost forever, there is no doubt that a wide-ranging and dangerous Soviet espionage network existed inside the United States prior to 1990.

The Soviets Plant Moles Inside America

After the revolutions of 1917, the communists spent several years solidifying their hold on Russia during a civil war. Once their dictatorship was firmly in place, however, they turned their attention to other parts of the world.

As early as 1919, the Soviet Socialists used one of their ‘front’ organizations, the IWW, to terrorize the city of Seattle in a general strike. The ordinary citizens of that city were confined to their houses as IWW officials enforced a curfew. Simple daily necessities like food and laundry were sometimes unavailable.

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) seemed to be a labor union, but was in fact a ‘cover’ for Soviet intelligence agencies.

The USSR planted spies in many different organizations, governmental and nongovernmental, and created other organizations of their own. As historians Stan Evans and Herbert Romerstein write,

A main object of Moscow’s subliminal onslaught was to plant secret agents in the United States and other Western nations, with emphasis on official agencies that dealt with military, intelligence, or foreign policy issues. From these positions, pro-Soviet operatives were able to engage in policy sabotage, spying, and other species of subversion that advanced the interests of the Kremlin. As shall be seen, activity of this type was involved in countless aspects of the Cold War story.

The international communist conspiracy was more successful than many people at the time knew. Only later did it become clear how effectively the Soviets had infiltrated various parts of American society.

Men like Alger Hiss engaged in ‘policy sabotage,’ which meant that they were able to influence policymakers. Under the sway of Hiss’s advice, and his assessments of various foreign situations, various government officials made decisions which were not in the best interests of the United States, but which were advantageous to the Soviet Union.

Hiss even had face-to-face and one-on-one meetings with President Roosevelt in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Under Hiss’s influence, FDR made decisions which meant that millions of people in Poland and Czechoslovakia would be victims of murderous socialist dictatorships. Millions of them them died.

Agents like Hiss are called ‘moles,’ meaning that they spend a long time, quietly working their ways into important roles inside crucial institutions. Inside the United States, the Soviet espionage network continued to operate from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Karelian Fever: Idealistic Americans Suffer under Soviet Rule

From the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917, and from the time of the founding of the USSR in 1922, a small but steady stream of well-intentioned people from both Canada and the United States migrated to Russia, hoping to establish a communist utopia.

That stream continued over the decades.

One demographic segment within this trend was a group of Finns. People had migrated from Finland to both Canada and the U.S., settling and establishing homes and families.

After living in North America for many years, some of these immigrants, and some of their children, formed a movement known as ‘Karelian Fever.’ They migrated back to Finland, where they intended to build a socialist society.

Fueled by visions of economic justice, they did not understand that Soviet propaganda was manipulating them. The communists in Russia and in Finland saw the idealistic migrants as cheap labor.

Finland was not on good terms with the USSR. After the 1917 revolution, Finland, a former Russian possession, declared its independence from Russia. Military conflict resulted as the Finns asserted their autonomy.

Although Finland was opposed to the Soviet Socialists, there was a significant minority of communists and socialists within Finland.

When the Finns from North America arrived in the USSR and in Finland in the 1930s, hoping to build a socialist paradise, they did indeed work diligently. But Stalin did not believe that they were trustworthy, having lived in North America.

Ultimately, Stalin chose to eliminate most of them, as history John Earl Haynes reports:

The tragic end to Karelian Fever might be worth some attention. In the early 1930s, thousands of idealistic Finnish Americans and Finnish Canadians migrated to the Soviet republic of Karelia to help construct communism. Estimates vary from at least 4,000 to as many as 10,000 of these migrants. Most had been born in Finland, migrated to North America, and then migrated back eastward to Karelia. But in their second migration they took with them their children who had been born and raised for some time and in the USA and Canada.

Stalin was paranoid. His secret police fabricated false allegations, arrested many of the Finns, and executed most of them.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, archeologists discovered mass graves containing the bodies of thousands of Finns. They had been executed by firing squad, starved to death, or died of disease in internment camps.

Many of these victims were U.S. citizens. The USSR’s actions in this case constituted an act of war. Questions remain about the degree to which the U.S. government was aware of the situation and why it failed to respond in any significant way.

The Judiciary’s Task: Textual Interpretation

The history of the United States can be understood through the lens of textual interpretation. Rights and freedom are defined and listed in documents, primarily in the Constitution.

One central assignment for a judge or a court is, then, to examine, explain, and apply the foundational texts both of the Constitution and of various individual laws and regulations.

If a citizen’s liberties are codified in these documents, then carefully examining the words is the activity which will protect a citizen’s freedoms and civil rights. We can see how, over the years and centuries, these texts have protected citizens and their rights from the government.

Citizens of the United States, wishing to limit the government’s power and thereby protect themselves, wrote the Constitution in 1787. It was ratified by the various states during the several years following.

In 1789, the citizens further clarified their rights by proposing, and ratifying, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known collectively as the Bill of Rights.

These texts, along with numerous other statutes, are interpreted and applied in court. Four principles have emerged which guide legal interpretation. Attorney General and former Senator Scott Pruitt explains the first principle:

The law, whether statutes or the Constitution itself, must be applied according to its text. In other words, judges should not apply the law based on what is good policy or what they suppose Congress may have intended (but did not express) in passing legislation.

The task of a judge is to examine words on paper. The judge is not to operate out of his own opinion about what should happen, nor is the judge to guess about what Congress may have thought when it wrote the words.

The rules of a board game, or of a sport, are similar: the people playing the game, or the referees and umpires, must apply the rules as they stand and as they are written. The officials cannot make calls according their own opinions about what should happen; nor can the officials make calls based on guesses about what other people might believe.

Scott Pruitt continues with the second principle of interpretation:

The words of the law should be understood as they were understood by the people when the law was enacted.

Words and phrases can change their meaning over time. For example, the Constitution speaks of Congress issuing a “letter of marque,” a phrase which is no longer common in our language. The phrase refers to a document which authorizes a private citizen to stop pirates and turn them over to the government.

Judges must become familiar with certain words and phrases which have changed their meanings, or which are no longer often used. Why? Because rights, freedoms, and liberties are contained in those words and phrases.

The meaning of laws is fixed by the meaning ascribed to their words at the time they were enacted.

The first two principles relate to words. A notion called ‘popular sovereignty’ is contained in a third principle of constitutional

jurisprudence: an unwavering respect for the idea of popular government. Laws, including the Constitution, receive their legitimacy from the people.

The authors of the Constitution were familiar with the writings of John Locke and other philosophers. Based on such views, they argued, in the Declaration of Independence, that “the consent of the governed” lent legitimacy to a government.

The Declaration of Independence, in turn, was the philosophical foundation for the Constitution. The Constitution formulates mechanisms whereby “the governed” – i.e., the citizens – can give or withhold consent. Scott Pruitt writes:

Judges should respect the constitutional prerogative of the people to pass laws through their representative legislatures, limited by the restraints imposed by the Constitution – which was itself ratified by popular means.

The fourth and final interpretive principle for judges and courts is that the one should read the Constitution as a document which articulates, and provides defensive mechanisms for, the individual’s political liberties:

The rights actually guaranteed in the Constitution should be tenaciously defended, from the right of free speech to the rights of criminal defendants.

This is especially clear in the ninth and tenth amendments. The citizens pointedly withheld their ratification of the Constitution until those amendments were added to it.

The ninth amendment states that a citizen not only has the rights which the Constitution specifically designates to citizens, but that a citizen also has other, unenumerated, rights.

The tenth amendment states that the government has only those rights or powers specifically given to it in the Constitution, and no others. Scott Pruitt comments:

The Constitution’s primary protection of liberty is its structure of checks and balances between branches and its division of powers between the federal government and the states.

One important task for a judge or for a court, then, is to determine ‘questions of law’ – to ask about the meaning of a piece of text.

Not all of a legal process is linguistic. There are also ‘questions of fact’ – determining a physical circumstance or event.

The United States legal system was able to develop toward an increasing amount of personal liberty and toward a desired objective neutrality because it directed its judiciary to view their task linguistically. The codification of legislation in text is a public process, making the law accessible to all.

Two of the several values on which a free society bases its legal system are objectivity and neutrality.

When the interpretation of law is seen as a linguistic task, and not a political task, the legal process is nudged toward objectivity. When the judge and jury are asked to view themselves as interpreters of a text, and not expressers of conviction, then the process is nudged toward neutrality.