Soviet Infiltration of the Upper Echelons of American Government

This is a must read article.

Here are some important excerpts:

There is no doubt that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy and continued to provide information through the Yalta Conference which he attended as an advisor to FDR. The Soviets thoroughly infiltrated the Manhattan Project and were able to build an atomic bomb several years before they otherwise would have because of such spies as Klaus Fuchs, a German-born British scientist, convicted of espionage in the late 1940s and Theodore Hall, a young American physicist who died in Britain in 1999, who had never been publicly named as a spy until the Venona material was released. 

Hall had graduated from Harvard at 19 and was immediately recruited and sent to Los Alamos. A dedicated communist, he got in contact with the KGB after learning what he was working on. Although the FBI questioned him after Venona decryptions revealed his treachery, there was no legally admissible evidence against him (the government had made a decision not to use Venona material n court; in fact, it was doubtful that it would be legally admissible). Since he denied everything and there were no cooperating witnesses, it was not possible to prosecute him. 

At least two other important atomic spies turned over top secret information to the KGB but American counter-intelligence was never able to link the cover names in the messages — Quantum and Fogel — to real people. 

All told, some 350 Americans turn out to have worked for Soviet intelligence during World War II — a time when we were allies. American counter-intelligence eventually identified more than 125 of these agents — but were never able to nail down who the other 200 plus were. Virtually every one of the people accused of being a Soviet agent by Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers — both reviled and denounced for making false charges not only by political partisans in the 1940s but by historians ever since — turns out to have been a Soviet spy. 

The most highly placed spy was Harry Dexter White, the number two man the Treasury Department and one of the architects of the post-war international financial order — he designed the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Bretton Woods agreement. The KGB so valued White’s information — including meetings at the founding UN conference where he revealed the American negotiating strategy — that when he hinted at leaving government service because of financial pressures, the KGB offered to pay his daughter’s college tuition. 

There were even Soviet sources with access to the Venona project. One of the Russian-language specialists working on the project was William Weisband, who was exposed by a decrypted message as a long-time KGB asset. In 1950 the new liaison from British intelligence to Venona was Kim Philby, one of the most prominent Soviet moles within the British intelligence service. 

The Soviets thus learned about Venona very early, tracked its progress and were able to warn vulnerable agents. By the time American counter- intelligence began to follow and surveil those who had served as Soviet spies, they had ceased their activities and disposed of incriminating evidence. 

About all the FBI was able to do was, through interrogation, let these former spies know they were under suspicion, force them out of government service, and by leaking their names to congressional committees, ensure that they were called to testify before such bodies as the House Committee on Un-American Activities, where most took the Fifth Amendment, refusing to answer questions based n the possibility of self-incrimination. That tactic provided legal protection but also branded them in the public eye as security risks. 

And that brings us back to Senator McCarthy.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.