THE REBUTTAL

Defending American Betrayal

from the Book-Burners

Diana West

With Additional Commentary from the Blogosphere

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Preface

PART ONE

PART TWO

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

PART THREE

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Commentary from the Blogosphere

M. Stanton Evans

− Harry Hopkins, Diana West and Me

− In Defense of Diana West

Vladimir Bukovsky & Pavel Stroilov

− Why Academics Hate Diana West

Appendix 1: ‘Mightier Pen’ Award

Appendix 2: Chronology of Attacks

Appendix 3: ‘Warning: Historians at Work’

The Rebuttal

Defending American Betrayal

from the Book-Burners

By Diana West

"Well-designed attacks on an opponent’s credibility can overpower well-crafted messages.”

— David Horowitz[1]

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Who says such things, and why?

I have since come to understand the “take-down” of my book and the ad hominem attacks on my person in terms of a scorched earth policy to preserve and protect the conventional narrative as promulgated by mainstream academia.

But Frontpage is a “conservative” site, I can hear people say.

This stopped me, too, at first. Then I realized that the books Radosh cites in his “take-down” − not to debate my ideas, but to impugn them − are written by academics from Yale, Harvard and Stanford. That’s liberal academia. Another source Radosh draws heavily from is a British historian and BBC documentary-maker whose works appear on PBS. More conventional (read: liberal) consensus.

My book threatens that consensus with arguments that are densely and meticulously documented. My sources are listed in 944 endnotes that draw from a bibliography that conventional historians consistently ignore. Specifically, I draw from the vast bibliography of Soviet espionage and infiltration that conventional historians ignore when writing World War II and even Cold War history. Indeed, the books Radosh cites omit or barely reference this same bibliography American Betrayal draws upon.

The Radosh review, then, is a defense of a conventional, tightly blinkered historiography – “the court histories that continue to obscure key facts about our backstage war with Moscow,” as M. Stanton Evans wrote in his endorsement of American Betrayal. But Radosh’s is in no way not a fair defense. It is not a fair debate. Instead, the Radosh review misrepresents my work by continually attacking my credibility. For example, he calls American Betrayal “yellow journalism conspiracy theories” all the while failing to inform readers about my book’s copious source material, which in itself is a rebuke to such charges. Such is the Radosh m.o., however, in defense of the conventional narrative. Indeed, a reader of the Radosh “take-down” is led to believe I made the whole thing up due to my “conspiratorial mindset.” This is a gross and destructive calumny.

But it is only the first. That makes what follows anything but a rejoinder in a traditional battle of ideas. It is instead a detailed defense set forth to disprove the smears and expose the fabrications and distortions that went into the 7,000-word “take-down” of American Betrayal.

The rebuttal begins.[2]

PART ONE

PREFACE

I will open with an email from Frontpage Magazine editor David Horowitz. I received this message after I declined Frontpage’s invitation to reply at Frontpage to the August 7 Radosh review of American Betrayal. Most readers don’t realize that the Radosh review is Frontpage’s second review of my book. The first, a positive review by Frontpage writer Mark Tapson,[3] was removed from the website by Horowitz on July 8. I declined Frontpage’s invitation to reply to the Radosh review on the principle that eliminating one opinion, as Horowitz did, and replacing it with a more “correct” opinion is no way to conduct a debate. I had and have no intention of legitimizing such an uncivil action, which, among other things, makes a mockery of Frontpage’s commitment to free speech.

David Horowitz has, to date, written two pieces attacking me and American Betrayal.[4] In the first, he cited the first reviewer’s alleged lack of expertise as the reason for his decision to take down the positive review. (In the second, Horowitz writes: “She should not have written this book.”) As an example of the first reviewer’s inexpertise, Horowitz wrote, the reviewer “readily conceded he was not familiar with the sources and could not properly assess such crucial matters as her claim that Soviet agents had gotten the United States to ship fissionable uranium to Stalin via Lend-Lease.”

As an aside, the word “fissionable” doesn’t appear in American Betrayal’s discussions of uranium. I mention this to flag a consistent pattern of misrepresentation or distortion that is evident in the Radosh review and follow-up pieces in which critics overstate a fact as stated in American Betrayal and criticize their own exaggeration.

That said, uranium shipments did indeed go to Stalin during World War II under the Roosevelt administration’s Lend-Lease program. Among my sources for this shocking fact is one source “familiar” to all: the United States Congress. I cite “Hearings on the Transfer of Atomic Material to the Soviet Union During World War II.” As such, this is quite easy to “properly assess” – if one has read my book.

This is just one of dozens of false claims about American Betrayal that Radosh and Horowitz and the echo chamber they triggered have made, some even written by people who admitted they haven’t read it., The baseless sloganeering against me now includes such falsehoods as: I called Eisenhower a Communist (false); I claimed the FDR administration was “run” by Soviet agents (false); that I portrayed Churchill as a Soviet dupe (false); that I argued for an “entente with Hitler’s army against Stalin” (false).

If there is a beginning to the lies, gross distortions and outright fabrications that I now must sort through, it is the editors’ note posted (in full knowledge of its gross distortion of the facts) over the Radosh review at Frontpage.

Editors’ note: Frontpage offered Diana West equal space to reply to Professor Radosh’s points below. She refused.

I refused to reply only at Frontpage – and the editors know that I refused to reply only at Frontpage. In other words, they decided to publish a gross distortion of the truth to encourage readers of the Radosh review to believe I am either incapable or uninterested in responding to the charges therein.

Not true.

Here is the Horowitz email.

Dear Diana,

Our decision to remove the review of American Betrayal was not because it offered an incorrect opinion that we wanted to suppress. The review was removed because the reviewer was as incompetent to provide an informed assessment of your book as you were to write it.

David

My task is to disprove this intemperate and, worse, baseless charges against my competence in handling evidence and evaluating it. This is the basis of the Radosh-Horowitz critique, and, therefore the basis of the multiple copy-cat critiques that have been written since, even by people who openly admitted they had not read my book.[5] (I repeat this fact because it is incredible to me.) This competence issue makes my rebuttal about more than score-keeping, or tit-for-tat. These widely repeated attacks on me and my book undermine my integrity as a writer, and thus my livelihood.

My challenge to readers: Determine for yourselves who is “incompetent.”

There is something else. The vitriolic intensity of the attacks against me and my book is harder to analyze, veering into a murkier realm of the psychological. Nonetheless, this vitriol remains the leading edge of the story.

In his Frontpage editorial against American Betrayal, Horowitz wrote:

“Neither West nor her supporters have begun to meet that standard or attempted to answer even one factual claim that Radosh has made about her book.”

Mind you, Horowitz was writing one day after the Radosh’s 7,000-word “take-down” appeared.

He continued:

“I don't have a lot of hope that this will change because West has already shown herself to be a very angry, very self-centered and very reckless partisan, with a paranoid streak and a disposition to think in extreme terms that have only a tenuous and deceptive relation to the truth.”

Such vitriol fed the hysteria against American Betrayal, inspiring what I can only describe as ritual denunciations of me for exhibiting signs of so-called McCarthyism and John Bircherism.

These are buzz terms that are not being used to shed light and truth but rather to stop debate.

Like pulling a review off a website.

Stopping debate is what this Horowitz-Radosh campaign is about.

I refuse to let them.

RADOSH’S INTRODUCTION

I will now address the introductory matter in Radosh’s “McCarthy on Steroids” and identify more than twenty falsehoods.

Editors’ note: Frontpage offered Diana West equal space to reply to Professor Radosh’s points below. She refused.

1) FALSE (addressed above).

Radosh:

“Many Americans at both ends of the political spectrum view history in conspiratorial terms. The late Senator Joseph McCarthy set the bar very high when he claimed to have uncovered “a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.” In that famous speech to the Senate on June 14, 1951, McCarthy condemned former Chief of Staff of the Army and Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense as a traitor who made “common cause with Stalin on the strategy of the war in Europe,” who “took the strategic direction of the war out of Roosevelt’s hands and – who fought the British desire, shared by [General] Mark Clark, to advance from Italy into the eastern plains of Europe ahead of the Russians.”

“Diana West, who expands the scope of this conspiracy in American Betrayal, is McCarthy’s heiress.

2) FALSE: I don’t “expand” the scope of any conspiracy.

FACT: My book, which I began writing in an effort to understand the phenomenon of Islamic influence on the policy-making chain in the post-9/11 period, examines the phenomenon of Communist influence on the policy-making chain, a secret intelligence war planned and directed from Moscow. The “scope” of conspiracy here is Stalin’s (and Lenin’s before him). It is neither McCarthy’s conspiracy for attempting to uncover it nor mine for writing about it.

Radosh:

“She argues that during the New Deal the United States was an occupied power, its government controlled by Kremlin agents who had infiltrated the Roosevelt administration and subverted it.” (Emphasis added.)

3) FALSE: The phrase “the United States was an occupied power” does not appear in American Betrayal. This connotes a state of military occupation that is not under consideration.

FACT: I argue at length that the strategic placement of hundreds of agents of Stalin’s influence inside the US government and other institutions amounted to a “de facto occupation” (p. 114). Later (p. 193), I write: “The vast and deep extent of Communist penetration, heretofore denied, had in fact reached a tipping point to become a de facto Communist occupation of the American center of power.”

3a) FALSE: Further, the word “controlled” appears on 16 pages in American Betrayal, but is never used to describe the relationship of Kremlin agents and the US government. Again, not in my book. Why isn’t it? The word doesn’t apply to the influence operations under discussion. By virtue of the amorphous nature of deception and disinformation, influence operations do not work in such concrete ways, as Radosh and Horowitz should, but don’t seem to, understand.

FACT: On almost 50 pages of American Betrayal, I reference and discuss Soviet, Communist, Marxist “influence” and “influence operations.” There is no discussion of this in the Radosh “take-down.” There is no explanation of the concept I define as a “de facto occupation” that permitted Kremlin agents to “influence” the US government. Radosh repeatedly mischaracterizes the “influence” I write about as “control” throughout his “take-down.”

Radosh:

“Like McCarthy, whom West believes got everything correct [sic], she believes a conspiracy was at work that effectively enabled the Soviets to be the sole victors in World War II and shape American policies in the postwar world.”

4) FALSE: Read the article Radosh links to as his “proof” of the categorical statement. Nowhere does my article say McCarthy “got everything correct [sic].”

FACT: I believe McCarthy was generally right, however. There was indeed massive, Kremlin-directed Communist infiltration of the US government that he and other elected officials from both parties set out to uncover in the 1940s and 1950s (and up to the 1970s). This is a fact and a factor, I argue at great length in American Betrayal, that we as a people have not integrated into the telling of our general history.

Radosh:

“Writing sixty years later, she claims that the evidence that has come to light in the interim not only vindicates McCarthy’s claims but goes well beyond anything he imagined.”

5) FALSE: Evidence has come to light that vindicates many, many of McCarthy’s claims, but I do not claim such evidence goes “well beyond anything he imagined.” (In other words, not in my book.) It may or may not go beyond what McCarthy imagined. I bring this up not as a matter of semantics but because in the book I do repeatedly emphasize this notion of “not knowing the half of it” – but, it so happens, not with regard to Joseph McCarthy.

FACT: I link this notion of “not knowing the half of it” two or three times to the ex-Communist witnesses Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley; later to the ex-Socialist writer Eugene Lyons; also, Gen. Mark Clark, Rep. Martin Dies, and AP executive Kent Cooper – all as they bear witness to or attempt to understand what is in fact a larger Soviet-directed infiltration than they can possibly know about. I seized on this notion from the conclusion of Spies by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, who wrote:

“It was no witch hunt that led American counterintelligence officials to investigate government employees and others with access to sensitive information for Communist ties . . . but a rational response to the extent to which the Communist Party had become an appendage of Soviet intelligence. And, as the documents in Vassiliev’s notebooks make plain, they only knew the half of it.”

Notice that Radosh, however, for purposes of his “take-down” mentions none of these key figures in my book. Instead, he falls back on that anti-anti-Communist failsafe, Joseph McCarthy, abusing the great patriot once more to smear a new attempt to assess the historical reality of Communist infiltration of the US government.

Radosh:

“Throughout American Betrayal, West uses the terms “occupied” and “controlled” to describe the influence the Soviet Union exerted over U.S. policy through its agents and spies.”

6) FALSE: As noted above (see #3a), I do not use the word “controlled” in this way.

7) FALSE: As noted above (see #3), Radosh omits my very specific explanation of and use of the term, which I introduce thus (p. 68):

“As [M. Stanton] Evans lays out in detail, much of it drawn from newly declassified FBI and Senate records, the United States wasn’t just riddled by Communist agents; we were for all intents and purposes occupied by a small army—a small army being just what this kind of war requires. Expert estimates now peg the number of Americans assisting Soviet intelligence agencies during the 1930s and 1940s as exceeding five hundred. Not one Aldrich Ames. Not two Rosenbergs. Not five “magnificent” Cambridgers. More than five hundred willing and variously able American traitors, many operating at the very highest levels of the federal government, with who knows how many more in support roles. This was a national security fiasco of a magnitude that has never, ever entered national comprehension.”

Radosh:

“She believes she has exposed “the Communist-agent-occupation of the U.S. government” during the Roosevelt and Truman eras, and that her discoveries add up to a Soviet-controlled American government that conspired to strengthen Russia throughout World War II at the expense of American interests, marginalize anti-Communist Germans, and deliver the crucial material for the Atomic Bomb to Stalin and his henchmen.” (Emphasis added.)

8) FALSE: I don’t “believe” I “exposed” anything that has been previously documented. This belief is not in my book.

FACT: What I have done is connect some dots and also resurrect what has long been in plain sight – or, perhaps, obscured from plain sight by Left-liberal convention, Soviet design, elite complicity and the like. Everything in my book is open record, and appropriately sourced. The breathlessness in this charge is Radosh’s alone.

8a) FALSE: Note the repetition of the term “Soviet-controlled American government.”

FACT: As noted above (see #3a, #6), I do not use the word “controlled” in this way, and, in fact, repeatedly describe a Soviet-influenced American government. Again, not in my book.

8b) As noted above (see #3, #7), I discuss “de facto” occupation – a concept Radosh ignores.

8c) Another FALSE phrase contained in the Radosh sentence above concerns the delivery of “the crucial material” for Stalin’s atomic bomb. The concept of “crucial” falls into the Radosh pattern of exaggeration noted above.

FACT: American Betrayal discusses the documented, three-quarters of a ton of uranium that went through to Stalin under pressure of Harry Hopkins’ Lend-Lease program – and much more. Such exaggeration by Radosh and Horowitz is inaccurate. On p. 126 of American Betrayal, historian Richard Rhodes offers a better way to think about the 23 atomic materials including uranium (and don’t forget over 13 million pounds of aluminum tubing) that Lend-Lease sent Stalin during World War II: Such ingredients, Rhodes writes, were “useful in constructing and controlling a nuclear reactor.”

Radosh:

“It also conspired to cover up the betrayal. In West’s summation: `The Roosevelt administration [was] penetrated, fooled, subverted, in effect hijacked by Soviet agents… and engaged in a “sell-out” to Stalin” that “conspirators of silence on the Left…would bury for as long as possible, desperately throwing mud over it and anyone who wanted the sun to shine in.’ “

The quotation in full:

“The Roosevelt administration, penetrated, fooled, subverted, in effect hijacked, by Soviet agents, as a matter of national policy, mixed them up [US war interests and Soviet war interests], much to the world’s deep, vast suffering. This `sell-out’ to Stalin, as critics tagged it (and they didn’t know the half of it), would become a bone of sharpest and most vociferous contention that the conspirators of silence on the Left, in the Democratic Party, and among the Washington elites would bury for as long as possible, desperately throwing mud over it and anyone who wanted to let the sun shine in. Why? As G. Bernard Noble, chief of the Division of Historical Policy Research at the State Department, wrote to Secretary of State Dean Acheson in 1950, the publication of the Yalta papers, for example, would `embarrass’ too many people and, in the acid paraphrase of Bryton Barron, fired Yalta archivist and author of Inside the State Department, `lead to demands for publication of the minutes of other conferences.’

“More exposure, and we can’t have that.”

Radosh:

“According to West, it was only because Washington was `Communist-occupied’ that the United States aligned itself with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany.”

9) FALSE. Like so many false Radosh statements, this one is unsupported by any quotations.

FACT: The manner in which Radosh, deliberately or ineptly, mischaracterizes my thesis is a challenge to overcome throughout this rebuttal process. This particular claim does not appear in my book. It is true, of course, that pro-Soviet and Soviet influence inside our government helped foster the US-USSR military alliance. The implication Radosh seems to advance suggests, sans Communist influence, Washington might have aligned itself with Nazi Germany, and that’s not in my book.

That said, I do argue that the US relationship with the Soviet Union from recognition (1933) forward precipitated a moral decline that grew from our government’s continual need to lie to cover up Soviet crime, even against this country and its citizens, in order to continue such relations and, later, military alliance. This alliance, I argue, drew us into actual and increasing complicity with one genocidal monster to defeat another genocidal monster, a concept explained by Solzhenitsyn, whom − among other luminaries, including Conquest, Koestler, Orwell, Besancon − I discuss at great length in the book. The Radosh “take-down” never mentions any of them.

From American Betrayal, p. 196:

“The fact is, the implications of normalizing relations with the thoroughly abnormal USSR didn’t just reward and legitimize a regime of rampantly metastasizing criminality. Because the Communist regime was so openly and ideologically dedicated to our destruction, the act of recognition defied reason and the demands of self-preservation. Recognition and all that came with it, including alliance, would soon become the enemy of reason and self-preservation. In this way, as Dennis J. Dunn points out, we see a double standard in American foreign policy evolve, and, I would add, in American thinking more generally. It was here that we abandoned the lodestars of good and evil, the clarity of black and white. Closing our eyes, we dove head first into a weltering morass of exquisitely enervating and agonizing grays.”

Later, on p. 205:

“As Solzhenitsyn would later tell us, `World democracy could have defeated one totalitarian regime after another, the German, and then the Soviet. Instead it strengthened Soviet totalitarianism [and] helped bring into existence a third totalitarianism, that of China.’ ”72

Radosh:

“But Ms. West writes without an understanding of historical context and lacks awareness of much of the scholarly literature on the subjects she writes about.”

10) FALSE: As noted above, (see Author’s Note), Radosh obscures the extensive bibliography American Betrayal draws from, as indicated in the book’s 944 endnotes. As noted above (see Author’s Note), my true crime here is rejecting the “scholarly” (read: liberal) consensus as drastically incomplete.

Radosh:

“Moreover, she disregards the findings of the sources she does rely on when they contradict her yellow journalism conspiracy theories.”

11) FALSE.

FACT: I do not disregard the finding of sources when they contradict. See for example p. 147, p. 164, p. 267, p. 372.

11a) I do not write “yellow journalism conspiracy theories.” Never have, never will. “Yellow journalism” is a sensational style of journalism that is sourced thinly or not at all. American Betrayal is densely, thickly sourced with 900-plus endnotes. (I note this again, because Radosh never cites or describes my extensive, careful documentation.) My sources include congressional investigations, State Department records, memoirs, histories, biographies, military histories, diplomatic histories, intelligence histories, newspapers, magazines, the writings of Solzhenitsyn, Koestler, Conquest, Orwell, Lyons, Kravchenko, Dallin, etc.

11b) I do not write “conspiracy theories.” I write about the Soviet conspiracy – an extensively documented fact, not a theory.

Radosh:

“Consequently she arrives at judgment after judgment that is not only bizarre on its face, but also unwarranted by the evidence and refuted by the very authorities she draws on.”

12) FALSE: Radosh’s opinion (“bizarre”) aside: The evidence for my judgments is plentiful whether or not Radosh omits mention of its range and depth, as listed in 900-plus endnotes.

My judgments are based on my reading of the evidence.

Take it or leave it, but don’t distort it.

Radosh:

“As a historian I normally would not have agreed to review a book such as this one. But I changed my mind after seeing the reckless endorsements of its unhinged theories by a number of conservative individuals and organizations.”

“UNHINGED”?

Radosh:

“These included the Heritage Foundation which has hosted her for book promotions at a lunchtime speech and a dinner; Breitbart.com which is serializing America Betrayed; PJ Media which has already run three favorable features on West; Amity Shlaes, who writes unnervingly that West’s book, `masterfully reminds us what history is for: to suggest action for the present’; and by conservative political scientist and media commentator Monica Crowley, who called West’s book `A monumental achievement.’ “

RECKLESS ENDORSEMENTS? Over to you, Monica, Amity, Heritage, PJM, Heritage, Breitbart, et al.

NOTE: “Bizarre”? Here’s bizarre: From his list of “reckless endorsements,” Radosh omits the “reckless endorsement” I received from M. Stanton Evans, author of Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Sen. Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies, and, with the late Soviet subversion and counterintelligence expert, Herbert Romerstein, Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government. This is truly “bizarre” because Evans’ praise for American Betrayal is proudly displayed on the front cover.

For the record, Evans wrote: “This explosive book is a long-needed answer to court histories that continue to obscure key facts about our backstage war with Moscow. American Betrayal is must-reading for serious students of security issues and Cold War deceptions, both foreign and domestic.”

Could Evans’ omission in Radosh’s list of “reckless” endorsers be due to the fact that Evans authored an epic evisceration of Radosh’s sloppy and mendacious review of Blacklisted by History? Or, more to the point, could it be because Evans is the foremost authority on the McCarthy era and because Evans’ valued endorsement of my book might detract from Radosh’s attempted “take-down”?

Just wondering.

Radosh:

“West has evidently seduced conservatives who are justifiably appalled by the left’s rewriting of history, its denials that Communists ever posed a threat, and its claim that Communist infiltration was a destructive myth created by witch-hunters intent on suppressing dissent.”

SEDUCED?

Radosh:

“For these readers, West’s credibility derives from her aggressive counter vision. For those who have not read the important works of Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, Christopher Andrew, Alexander Vassiliev, Allen Weinstein and others, what she has written may seem a revelation, as she herself claims.”

13) FALSE: I do not claim as revelation the findings of other authors.

FACT: Rather, I quote and cite their work.

Radosh:

”But for anyone familiar with the historical literature, the core of what she has written is well known and what is new is either overheated, or simply false and distorted—the sort of truculent recklessness that gives anti-communism a bad name.

FOUL: Ad hominem. No evidence. (The evidence Radosh does present I rebut below. I will show that the “truculent recklessness” on display is Radosh’s.)

Radosh:

“One of the most unsettling aspects of West’s use of previous authorities who provide the only reliable information in her book is the way she attacks the very writers who pioneered in exposing Soviet espionage and infiltration, while also disregarding their conclusions when they don’t agree with hers.”

14) FALSE: I do not “attack” any of these authorities.

Radosh:

In a typical instance, she writes: “[Christopher] Andrew and [Vasili] Mitrokhin seem fairly hip to the problem, but then soft-soap its cause.”

FOUL: That’s an “attack”?

Radosh:

“Even more preposterously she writes of those of us who drew attention to the guilt of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg that we view it as a matter of personal conscience and not `an issue of national security.’ “

15) FALSE: I do not write about Ronald Radosh in my book. I expound on the conclusions of others.

Radosh:

“This is absurd and anyone who has read The Rosenberg File or the many articles I have written since about the case would know it.”

16) FALSE: I do not write about Ronald Radosh.

Radosh:

“She attacks Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, among the greatest scholars of Soviet espionage, for their failure to connect `treachery with its impact,’ by which she means that they failed to come to her wild-eyed conclusion that Soviet espionage was not only a clear and present danger but succeeded in making America a puppet of its Kremlin masters. As a result, she writes, `The recent confirmations of guilt often show up as mere technicalities…The reckoning eludes us.’ ”

17) FALSE.

FACT: Here, from American Betrayal, is proof I did not “attack” Weinstein and Vassiliev (et al).

Today, archival evidence, unearthed by researchers in Russia and released in the United States, proves Judge Kaufman to have been correct. “Absent an atomic bomb, Stalin would not have unleashed Pyongyang’s army to conquer the entire Korean peninsula,” Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, authors of The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors, concluded in 2000. “Confident that his possession of atomic weapons neutralized America’s strategic advantage, Stalin was emboldened to unleash war in Korea in 1950,” John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, authors of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, wrote in 2009. These latter authors further contended that Soviet espionage, which ended up crippling America’s ability to read Soviet military communications, also ensured that the invasion of South Korea was a surprise “for which American forces were unprepared.”9

I’m guessing this revelation—that Soviet possession of an atomic bomb in 1949, due to the treachery of American Communists, helped precipitate the Korean War in 1950—is new to many readers, particularly those who have long been taught to believe that Rosenberg guilt, even when ultimately if reluctantly acknowledged, was largely a matter of “personal conscience” or political conviction, and not in any way an issue of national security. This is the typical response to this day. For example, even the landmark work The Haunted Wood, the 1999 book by Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev that amasses voluminous evidence of American treason on Moscow’s behalf during the New Deal (1930s) and war years (1940s), ultimately assesses this same evidence in the most personal terms: namely, the impact of this concerted and aggressive campaign of theft and subversion on the agents themselves. Their “enduring legacy,” the authors sum up in their final line, “remains one of inglorious constancy to a cruel and discredited cause.”10 Such minimization of the link between personal cause and global effect is typical, even among the greatest scholars of Soviet espionage. There has been scant attempt, to continue with the Rosenberg example, to connect their treachery with its impact: to connect the theft of nu- clear technology with 36,940 Americans killed, 91,134 wounded, and 8,176 still missing in action in a war that claimed at least two million civilian lives on both sides.11

Instead, we look back on an exhausting struggle over whether such Communist penetration existed in the first place. Communist penetration existed— the historical record amply and redundantly confirms this—but endless wrangling even today wards off a comprehensive reckoning of the impact of that penetration. Undoubtedly, this is the purpose of some of the wranglers. Like a magic word denoting an atavistic taboo, the term “McCarthyism,” used as an epithet, still stymies debate, while the nagging phrase “looking for a Communist under every bed” still dampens the blazing import of declassified revelations from the archives. The fact that there were hidden Communists practically everywhere, and probably under the bed, too, remains stuck in the limbo between old, discredited theories, and new, confirmed realities. Somehow, we never get around to judging the effects, the impact of Communism itself, whether that impact is something as concrete as a body count or something as vaporous as a sensibility. That’s why after seventy years of diligently chronicled crime, cataloged, sourced, witnessed, and experienced (the luminous names of Elinor Lipper, David Dallin, Victor Kravchenko, and, of course, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spring to mind, as well as Robert Conquest), the recent confirmations of guilt often show up as mere technicalities, relegated to footnotes, small type, and back pages. The reckoning eludes us.

Radosh:

“Finally, throughout her book she attacks the rigorous scholarship of John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, whose groundbreaking books on the Venona decrypts are unrivalled in exposing the true scale of Soviet espionage in the United States, and Soviet control of the American Communist Party.”

18) FALSE: Again, I do not “attack” Haynes and Klehr “throughout” American Betrayal or at all. Radosh provides no supporting evidence for this charge.

FACT: See this link for a listing of every reference to Haynes and Klehr in American Betrayal.

Radosh:

“Haynes and Klehr have also co-authored a classic study about the efforts of liberal and left historians to cover up the infiltration and its extent in a book titled In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage. Ignoring this record, West claims that Hayes and Klehr minimize the evidence they were the first to expose.”

19) FALSE: I do not “[ignore] this record.”

FACT: I cite In Denial four times in American Betrayal.

Radosh:

“What is really bothering her is that they do not buy her preposterous conclusion that `American statecraft was an instrument of Soviet strategy.’ ”

19) FALSE: Nothing is bothering me but the tedious task of refuting every smear and distortion of the Radosh review.

Radosh:

“Ignoring or denigrating these brave and accomplished scholars, West proceeds to construct a conspiracy thesis resting on five claims she believes establish a vast plot by Soviet agents and their American pawns to shape the outcome of the Second World War and in the process benefit the Communists at the expense of the West.”

20) FALSE: I can’t imagine what Radosh means by “ignoring” after I have quoted their work, but I never “denigrate” these historians. See also #14, #17, #18 and this.

I have to wonder about Radosh’s repeated, false charges that I, “unhinged,” “attack” or “denigrate” intelligence writers. He is not only slandering my credibility, he is impugning my temperament without any basis.

Is Radosh laying down the narrative of the “shrew”?

This is ugly stuff.

PART TWO

CHAPTER 1

“GROUNDLESS AND WORSE,” HE SAYS. BUT ... NOT IN MY BOOK

Radosh presents my entire book and its arguments as a “conspiracy thesis resting on five claims.” He writes: “In this review, I will focus on each of these claims in turn and show that they are groundless, and worse.”

I strongly reject this compression of my book and hope readers of the Radosh review, not my book, will one day discover for themselves that the nature, substance, thematic structure and tone of American Betrayal are wholly unrecognizable next to the Radosh presentation.

For purposes of this rebuttal, however, I will address the five Radosh claims, one by one. I will be as brief – but also as comprehensive – as possible. I will focus on disproving insupportable claims and rectifying the distortions inherent in these “five claims.” I will show that Radosh’s treatment of the subject matter bears little – and often literally no − resemblance to what is actually on the printed page. In other words, that it’s Radosh’s claims about my book that are “groundless and worse.”

In so doing, I will also point out a number of mistakes and inaccuracies – and outright fabrications  that pock and riddle the Radosh “take-down.”[6]

One final note: In rebutting these five charges, I will sometimes need to lead a reader more deeply into the weeds of fact and context than others. With that in mind, I will start with the most easily grasped set of Radosh misstatements.

The fifth and final section of the Radosh review is called “The Issue of the Second Front.” It runs more than 1,800 words, which makes it a little over 20 percent of the whole review.

Bear that in mind that it critiques a debate over the “second front” in World War II that is not in my book.

Radosh sets up Claim No. 5 as the debate over when to invade northern France: either in 1943 or 1944.

He writes:

“Let us assume for a moment that a cross-Channel invasion had been mounted in 1943 (before the Axis armies had been decimated in North Africa, Sicily and Italy) instead of at Normandy in 1944. In that case, as [historian Laurence] Rees argues, the Allies might indeed have reached Eastern Europe earlier in the fighting and Soviet influence would have been lessened. West, as we have seen, attributes the failure to Soviet agents who prevented Roosevelt and Churchill from following this course, allowing Stalin to take control. But Rees also writes (in a passage West also ignores) that `the cost in human terms for the Western Allies would have been enormous.’ “

Just to be clear, Radosh is saying that my discussion of the “second front” debate concerns the timing of the invasion of northern France. The US and Britain failed to invade northern France in 1943, Radosh claims I argue, due to “Soviet agents.”

There is a surreal quality to what I now must write: This section, 20 percent of the Radosh review, in no way, shape or form tracks the debate over the “second front” that is examined in American Betrayal. It’s simply not the debate I work through in my book. I repeat: It’s not in my book.

Further, Radosh calls my “interpretation of this event” (the one that is not in my book) “shallow and erroneous.”

What American Betrayal does examine in Chapter 9 is whether the abundantly confirmed presence of agents of Kremlin influence inside the US policy-making chain turned, shaded or shaped “second front” planning to Stalin’s advantage in the epic debate among the so-called Big Three. This great debate was over whether to amass US and British forces in northern France or in the Italy/Balkan region.

In simplest terms, I wrote about France vs. Italy/Balkan − not, as Radosh erroneously asserts, France ’43 vs. France ’44.

The word “Italy” does not appear in this section of the Radosh review in relation to the “second front” debate. Nor does the word “Balkan.”

This is so incredible I must repeat it: Radosh missed my entire debate, from the crux of it to the fine details.

The chapter in American Betrayal in question is 13,500 words long with 84 endnotes.

This omission automatically renders a series of related Radosh charges against me non-applicable and therefore false.

For example:

West “ignores” the human cost of the early French invasion ...”

– non-applicable and therefore FALSE

Another example: I “ignore” the unreadiness of Allied troops in 1943

– non-applicable and therefore FALSE

Radosh continues:

“West doesn’t even consider the question of whether Churchill and Roosevelt would have been willing to sacrifice so much as one million dead British and American soldiers to keep Eastern Europe out of Soviet hands.”

Where did that come from? This marks the intrusion of a “straw man argument.”

Something else: It should already be evident that Radosh is unlikely to know what I consider or don’t. Frankly, it doesn’t seem to matter to him anyway. His intentness on attack is such that he sees what he wants to and ignores what he doesn’t. (Evidence to come will further bear this out.)

Indeed, it seems fair to ask: Did Radosh read my book? Did he read it and not understand it? Or, did he read and purposefully distort it?

Such questions will recur in the discussion to come. I can only speculate on the answers, but the effect is clear each time: my work, and the reader’s trust of my work, has been harmed without cause, without evidence.

ANOTHER RADOSH CHARGE: FALSE

One of Radosh’s many introductory charges against my credibility is this:

“She disregards the findings of the sources she does rely on when they contradict her ….”

I have flagged four instances in brief (see “Radosh’s Introduction,” #10) where I make the reader aware of differences of opinion among the experts. But since we’re in the “second front” section, I now offer one of them in full.

On p. 267 of American Betrayal, amid talk of the Italian/Balkan strategy − which was supported in 1943 not only by Churchill but also by US Generals Mark Clark, Dwight Eisenhower, Ira Eaker and Carl Spaatz − I note:

“…There was a military argument to be made to refocus on France. In Wedemeyer Reports! Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer, one of the early planners of the invasion of France, makes a compelling military counterargument against Churchill’s and [Gen. Mark] Clark’s `soft underbelly’ strategy. Essentially, when he looked at the map, Wedemeyer didn’t see the requisite harbors through which a massive Italian-Balkan could be supplied as it made its way through almost practically impassable terrain. To be sure, this military debate remains open-ended…”

I not only did not disregard Wedemyer’s military argument favoring France over the Italy-Balkan, I laid it out.

MY TRUE CRIME REVEALED: VIOLATING THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

Next in this foundationally erroneous “second front” section, Radosh raises “another point that West fails to consider.” This, he writes, is the “continuing fear shared by both FDR and Churchill that … Stalin might seek a separate peace with Nazi Germany.”

To be sure, I do not give this point the requisite emphasis that conventional consensus histories do in perpetuating the conventional consensus on our wartime alliance with and support for Stalin − an even greater totalitarian monster than Hitler, who, it needs to be faced (and American Betrayal argues), was secretly and continually waging a dirty intelligence war against both Britain and the US for the duration of the Allied war with Nazi Germany. That said, I didn’t fail to take into consideration this “fear.” In my treatment, however, it appears briefly as one of the “great mistakes of the war,” which is the title of a 1949 book by military analyst Hanson Baldwin, a Pulitzer-Prize winner who covered World War II from the Pacific, North Africa and Europe for the New York Times.

From p. 112, American Betrayal:

Regarding the globe this way isn’t just a glass-half-empty exercise. It is a massive conceptual twist that forces what we “know” about “victory” into reverse. Hanson Baldwin’s 1949 book [Great Mistakes of the War] provides a good, solid point of analytical departure, particularly given that his four great and false premises of the war all have to do with our (incorrect) assessments and (mis)perceptions of the Soviet Union—head fakes, all—rather than conventional military blunders, as one might expect. They were:

·      That the Soviet Union had abandoned its policy of world revolution.

·      That “Uncle Joe” Stalin was a “good fellow,” someone we could “get along with.”

·      That the USSR might make a separate peace with Germany.

·      That the Soviet Union’s entry into the war against Japan was essential to victory
or necessary to save thousands of American lives.

Such premises, in other words, fall into the category we would later identify as Soviet dezinformatsiya – disinformation purposefully planted, fed, primed, echoed, and amplified according to Kremlin plan. Accepting Baldwin’s list, then, we might consider two possible explanations. We, ourselves, arrived at these false premises. Or we, subverted from within by hundreds of agents loyal to a foreign power and aided and abetted by exponentially more fellow travelers and useful fools, were convinced to arrive at these false premises and were duped by a massive Communist influence operation into making these and many, many other mistakes. This is the shocking new scenario that begins to take shape with the overlay of intelligence history onto diplomatic, military, and cultural history.”

Radosh makes no mention of my thematic treatment of such “great mistakes” – in part, at least, the apparent fruits of Soviet propaganda/disinformation  even though it is discussed throughout American Betrayal. The reason, I surmise, may explain why Radosh also repeatedly distorts my study and analysis of Soviet influence over Roosevelt administration policy-making into Soviet “control” of FDR. Many readers, as Radosh no doubt hopes, will reject the cartoon of Soviet “control” he falsely claims American Betrayal depicts as being, as Radosh describes me work, “unhinged.” His pattern of caricature, I believe, is an effort to avoid and deny and even hide the impact of Soviet infiltration on the formation of US policy that American Betrayal explores.

THE RADOSH PATTERN

While it is up to me to flag what is missing in the Radosh review, there is a discernible pattern to watch for.

Radosh will condemn me and my book for not bowing to the conventional consensus − in this case, the conventional consensus on “the fear of a separate peace.”

Next, he will lay out the conventional consensus, quoting from conventional consensus historians.

These, he labels “pre-eminent,” “definitive” and the like. I, on the other hand, fall not just outside this liberal orthodoxy, but am also a purveyor of “yellow journalism conspiracy theories.”

To make his calumny stick, he will, as usual, omit mention of my copious sources that led me to my non-conventional conclusions.

THE “MILITARY REALITY ON THE GROUND”

A piece of liberal consensus on World War II that Radosh defends to the death is the notion that the “military reality of the ground” dictated all manner of US and British appeasement of Stalin, from Lend-Lease profligacy to Yalta betrayal. Indeed, I have come realize this becomes his battering ram against my book’s premise – my re-examination of the role Soviet agents of influence played in shaping US policy. His thinking seems to be that if the “military reality on the ground” made Soviet appeasement our only choice, then the influence of a Harry Dexter White or Lauchlin Currie or Nathan Gregory Silvermaster or Alger Hiss or Harry Hopkins is just so many moot points of mere academic interest. In other hands, such as mine, he condemns any other analysis of these spies and influence agents’ impact as “yellow journalism conspiracy theories.”

To prove this point vis a vis the separate peace fear factor, Radosh writes:

“In March 1942, when the Allies were facing major military setbacks, Churchill wired FDR that the “gravity of the war” forced him to conclude that Britain and the U.S. could not deny Stalin the frontiers he wanted in Eastern Europe, even though it might contradict the goals of the Atlantic Charter. It was not Soviet agents who led Churchill to this judgment, but the military reality on the ground.”

Who knows what led Churchill to this judgment? I don’t. Radosh seems to be now consulting historian Laurence Rees, in whose popular book, World War II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazi and the West, the “gravity of the war” anecdote appears (p. 127). Radosh will rely heavily on Rees throughout his “take-down” of American Betrayal. Rees is a British historian and BBC documentary-maker, and reliably mainstream (read: liberal). (Full disclosure: Rees is cited about a half-dozen times in American Betrayal.)

If Radosh had just turned the page, he would have seen, pace Rees (p. 128), that the US disagreed with Churchill’s moral and/or military position here, as did the British War Cabinet. Thus, Churchill’s “military reality on the ground” concession to Stalin at this time was rejected. This rather cancels Radosh’s point about the “military reality on the ground” dictating Soviet appeasement, at least this time around. And that rather cancels his point against me.

One might quote Radosh to Radosh himself to note that his “judgment” (see “Radosh’s Introduction”) here was “not only bizarre on its face, but also unwarranted by the evidence and refuted by the very authorities [he] draws on.”

Then again, even if Churchill were making judgments to appease Stalin based on “the military reality on the ground,” that “reality” certainly shifted for Churchill to a point where Churchill would come up against Stalin throughout the following year, 1943, in pushing the Italy/Balkan strategy.

But as noted above, Radosh completely missed the Italy/Balkan part of my book.

MILITARY ANALYST HANSON BALDWIN ON THE “SEPARATE PEACE” FEAR FACTOR

For an opposing view on the “separate peace” fear factor, I will now quote military analyst Hanson Baldwin.

In Great Mistakes the War, pp. 10-11, Baldwin writes:

“In the same manner, a careful study of strategical facts and available military information should have indicated clearly the impossibility, from the Russian point of view, of a separate peace with Germany. Such a peace could only have been bought in the opening years of the war by major territorial concessions on Russia’s part, concessions which might well have imperiled the Stalin regime, and which, in any case, would have left the Russo-German conflict in the category of `unfinished business.’ In the closing years of the war, when Russia had everything to gain and nothing to lose by continuing the struggle to complete victory, a separate peace would have been politically ludicrous.” (Emphasis in the original.)

Nonetheless, Radosh raps me once more for failing to take the conventional consensus view.

Radosh:

“Instead of weighing these fears [separate-peace fear-factor], West turns to another anecdote…”

THE MISSING ANECDOTES

I now re-enter the surreal dimension of this rebuttal to note that the anecdote he now describes is not in my book.

This, too, is part of the Radosh “take-down” pattern: Imagining or fabricating events (I don’t know which), statements that are not in my book. The following is a particularly bizarre example.

The anecdote, he writes, is “telling how George Elsey found confidential files in the Map Room that showed FDR naively thinking he could trust Stalin, and instructed Hopkins to tell Soviet Minister Molotov that FDR was in favor of a Second Front in 1942.”

When I posted at dianawest.net the fact that this anecdote wasn’t in my book, Radosh replied at Frontpage Magazine (“Diana West’s Attempt to Respond”[7]). Incredibly, he fought me about the contents of my book.

Radosh:

“Maybe she couldn’t find the anecdote. But it is there in three different places where she writes how FDR told Hopkins to go into Molotov’s bedroom while he was staying in the White House so that he could meet with the President, and at that meeting, Hopkins told Molotov that FDR was in favor of a Second Front.”

Please note how Anecdote 1 (George Elsey, confidential files, Map Room) has changed form – now it’s in Molotov’s bedroom. But in Radosh’s telling, it is still somehow the same anecdote and, yes, it still remains in my book – now in three places. Again, there is a surreal quality to what I am about to write: The anecdote is not in my book – not once, not three times.

Radosh even cites page numbers where these anecdotes are, in fact, not to be found:

“They can be found on p. 129, p. 268 and p. 296. She missed them because of a trivial error I did make which was to associate the anecdote she took from her source, Laurence Rees’ WW II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West, with the anecdote about Elsey’s find, which is in another part of Rees’ book.”

Are you following this? If not, the key point to remember now is Radosh’s claim that my source for this anecdote (that isn’t in my book) is historian Laurence Rees.

He writes:

“West may not have mentioned Elsey’s role in her own text, but it is the anecdote itself about the Second Front that is the crux of this matter and she does refer to it on three occasions.”

Caught, Radosh blithely excuses his sloppy error and continues.

But Radosh is wrong again. Molotov’s name appears on p. 129 of American Betrayal, but not in a “second front” anecdote. The source, by the way, for the p. 129 Molotov reference is Robert Sherwood, not Rees.

There are ”second front” anecdotes on p. 268 and p. 296 (congratulations), but neither of them is about “how FDR told Hopkins to go into Molotov’s bedroom while he was staying in the White House so that he could meet with the President, and at that meeting, Hopkins told Molotov that FDR was in favor of a Second Front,” as Radosh maintains.

In my book – not Rees’s, which Radosh is clearly confusing with mine (and not for the final time) − it is Hopkins, not FDR, who is acting with volition, and there is nothing in my account about Molotov’s bedroom. On p. 268 I write: “Was it merely paradoxical back in May 1942, when, according to Soviet records, Harry Hopkins privately coached Foreign Minister Molotov on what to say to FDR to overcome U.S. military arguments against a `second front’ in France in May 1942?”

A different import entirely. Not surprisingly, my source for this isn’t Rees, as Radosh asserts. It’s Eduard Mark.

David Horowitz needs to reassess who is “incompetent” here.

BACK TO THE “SEPARATE PEACE” FEAR FACTOR

There’s more.

Book-report-style, Radosh trots out John Lewis Gaddis’s The Cold War: A New History to comment on the main Radosh “claim” that is not in my book – Claim No. 5, northern France – as a segue back to another dressing-down for my not having embraced the conventional consensus on the “separate peace” fear factor as the catch-all explanation for Soviet appeasement during the war.

Before I go on, I would like to point something out about Gaddis’s book. Yale professor Gaddis, whom Radosh calls the “pre-eminent historian of this conflict,” wrote this history of the Cold War one decade after the US release of 2,900 KGB cables known as the Venona archive. These World War II-era cables quite dramatically confirm the Soviet espionage activities of many members of the US federal government (some extremely influential) during what we think of as the dawn of the Cold War.

Gaddis, however, in his “new” Cold War history, doesn’t mention Venona (or other KGB archives). He mentions Soviet agent/State Department official Alger Hiss once in passing. Hiss, of course, did many things while working on behalf of the “Soviet motherland” (as Radosh calls it), including presiding over the creation of the United Nations, a Cold War battleground, which Gaddis does mention. Gaddis doesn’t mention Treasury official/Soviet agent Harry Dexter White at all, although White presided over the creation of the global economy (IMF and World Bank). Nor does he mention Whittaker Chambers, the ex-Communist agent-turned-witness who exposed Hiss as a Soviet agent in momentous Congressional hearings in 1948. Indeed, it was not until preparing for a conference honoring Chambers’ monumental anti-Communist manifesto Witness last year that Gaddis, as he “confessed” to the audience, read Witness for the first time.

I reference and discuss all of the above in American Betrayal. Radosh, in his “take-down” of American Betrayal, relies heavily upon the Yale professor’s book as a shining example of the consensus I should have conformed to but didn’t.

For not conforming – in Radosh’s mind, for failing to conform − Radosh proceeds not to debate my book, but to impugn it as “yellow journalism conspiracy theories,” and to smear me personally as “unhinged” and a “crackpot.”

Radosh writes:

“I quote Gaddis at length to indicate that the decisions reached by FDR and Churchill were not the results of being run by NKVD conspirators who had infiltrated Western governments, but because they needed to win the war against Hitler, which they realized would be impossible without Soviet military strength.”

Just to underscore, Gaddis doesn’t discuss “NKVD conspirators,” as Radosh calls them, or agents of Soviet influence, as I call them, in the first place. Radosh is making a specious argument for the inevitability of the “military reality on the ground” as having been the only possible and totally objective factor weighing on the decision-making of FDR and Churchill. American Betrayal considers the impact of identified Soviet spies and agents on their policy-making chain. In Radosh-world, this is clearly verboten.

So Radosh re-states the blinkered, conventional-consensus wisdom. But this doesn’t make it so – and particularly not when Radosh again grossly mischaracterizes the relationship between the “NKVD conspirators” and the Western governments. “Influence” was the name of the game – and the subject of American Betrayal  not “control,” as I have noted with some frequency above. FDR and Churchill were not being “run” by “NKVD conspirators,” nor does my book make such a claim. American Betrayal examines the impact of Soviet influence operations on US policy-making. Radosh, through his repeated distortions and omissions, seems to want to change the subject. By extension, he has in his review prevented reader from learning that Soviet “influence” is the subject under consideration in my book.

Why does Radosh continually misstate the concept so clearly outlined in my book?

ABOUT CHURCHILL

Out of thin air − or maybe out of another book − Radosh writes that I depict Winston Churchill in American Betrayal as a “Soviet dupe.” This, too, is not in my book.

Without offering any supporting quotations or anecdotes, Radosh states:

“Even the most minimally informed reader will recognize the most obvious chink in West’s conspiracy theories: the failure to explain how the anti-Bolshevik Churchill, whose hatred for the Soviet regime went back to 1917 when he sought to crush it in its cradle, became a Soviet dupe.”

This unsupported claim has been seized upon to bash my book, from the sundry attack-pieces that popped up quickly, like toadstools, to a string of one-star comments the book accrued on Amazon, post-Radosh.

Even cursory observation of Churchill’s actions vis a vis Stalin during the wartime alliance reveals the British prime minister did not follow a policy that could accurately be described as resolutely “anti-Bolshevik.” That aside: I have re-examined every reference to Churchill in American Betrayal, and my characterization of Churchill in no way resembles “dupe.” On the contrary, the portrait that emerges is of an increasingly powerless junior partner doomed to make a very bad deal. In focusing on Soviet influence on the Roosevelt White House, my spotlight reveals the advancing marginalization of Churchill by war’s end, particularly once he has lost the “second front” debate. In fact, some of the most perplexing and/or suspicious actions of Harry Hopkins − the controversial top aide to FDR whom, I argue, appears to have been an agent of Stalin’s influence inside the White House − catalogued in American Betrayal concern Hopkins’ documented efforts to contain Churchill. This includes Hopkins’ efforts to, in effect, “protect” FDR from Churchill’s influence, whether about sending troops into North Africa after the fall of Tobruk, expanding into the Mediterranean (more of the south-central Europe strategy), supporting anti-Communist Polish resistance, and so on. According to Charles E. Bohlen’s account, Hopkins all but ordered the prime minister of Britain privately to stop bringing up even an ancillary Balkan effort to FDR at the Tehran conference.

THE PATHOS OF CHURCHILL

In other words, there is in American Betrayal no evidence to support this Radosh claim that I portrayed Churchill as a “dupe,” or, as he writes elsewhere, one of “Stalin’s errand boys,” or an “unwitting tool.” Nor does Radosh offer any.

This baseless characterization of Churchill, falsely attributed to me, is as disturbing as any personal false charge hurled at me in this affair. In fact, it is the pathos of Churchill in American Betrayal that becomes clear as when, in the eyewitness testimony of his physician, Lord Moran, we learn of his desperation after Tehran, bested in the “second front” argument for good, ill, determined to get to Italy to confer with “Alex,” Gen. Harold Alexander, top commander of Allied forces in Italy.

From American Betrayal, p. 275:

“This drew a medical rebuke from his physician. “I told him it was madness to set off on a journey when he was under the weather like this,” Moran recalled. “At this he lost his temper. `You don’t understand. You know nothing about these things. I am not going to see Alex for fun. He may be our last hope. We’ve got to do something about these bloody Russians.”

That was no dupe.

Radosh’s charge is, in fact, baseless.

ABOUT RADOSH’S STRANGE YALTA APOLOGETICS

Radosh writes:

“At Yalta Churchill did agree to the division of Europe with a Soviet sphere of influence in the East in exchange for a promise by Stalin to accept British hegemony in Greece. True, the way the agreement was sold to western publics was outrageous. Stalin was presented as a leader who wanted democratic regimes in his own sphere. But the Yalta agreements were concluded in order to win the war while minimizing casualties, and, in any case, merely registered what had already occurred on the ground. It was most certainly not the conspiracy that West conjures.” (Emphasis added.)

I will defer comment on how Radosh has just underplayed the catastrophes for humanity made manifest at this final meeting of the so-called Big Three in February 1945, to note my rejection of Radosh’s breezy denial of conspiracy at Yalta. I will simply refer readers to Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government by Herbert Romerstein and M. Stanton Evans, for a cornucopia of detail about the “conspiracy” underway at Yalta that Radosh denies.

Stalin’s Secret Agents is a ground-breaking book, a documented chronicle of Soviet influence operations across the Roosevelt government. Interestingly, Radosh has mentioned the book favorably in print, which, of course, doesn’t mean he’s read it. In fact, it’s doubtful that he did read it. If so, he would have that learned Yalta was, in fact, much, much more than the “conspiracy West conjures.”

American Betrayal doesn’t treat Yalta in a systematic way, but I cannot let stand Radosh’s shocking distortion of the Yalta agreements as a means “to win the war while minimizing casualties.” Yalta was about making manifest postwar political concessions to Stalin arrived at in earlier conferences, and devising new ones.

As far as “minimizing casualties,” in an article cited in American Betrayal,[8] war historian John Keegan raised the possibility that it was Stalin while at Yalta, which took place in early February 1945, who was behind the Allied decision to the firebomb Dresden later that month, killing at least 35,000 people, mainly civilians, just three months before war’s end. Keegan wrote:

“The raid was intended to disrupt the German defence and to lend support to the Russians, who, it was alleged, had specifically requested it. In the days before the raid, when it was being planned, Churchill was at Yalta agreeing with Stalin and Roosevelt on the future of Europe.”

Keegan continued:

“It is said that Stalin asked for the bombing of Dresden at Yalta, though in conversation, not on paper. It is still difficult to identify who gave the critical order. Air Marshall Saundby, Harris's deputy, admits to approving it `with a heavy heart’. Harris said later: `The attack on Dresden was at the time considered a military necessity by people more important than myself.’ "

American Betrayal discusses the Yalta agreement by which the US and Britain participated with the USSR in what surely counts as a crime against humanity: Operation Keelhaul. This was the forcible, often violent “repatriation” of over two million Soviet-claimed nationals in Europe to Stalin to death and/or the Gulag, enabled and made possible by the participation of US and British authorities and military forces. Radosh doesn’t mention this crucial aspect of my book at all. Indeed, I have to wonder, did Radosh miss this part of my book, too?

He goes on, again, book-report-style, about Yalta as extracted from Harvard’s S.M. Plokhy’s Yalta: Price of Peace – more mainstream, conventional consensus history, this time drawing extensively on Soviet sources. Radosh picks up with conference developments that have little if anything to do with American Betrayal.

And then:

“But as Stalin told Molotov when signing the Yalta accords, `Do not worry. We can implement it in our own way later. The heart of the matter is the correlation of forces.’ That correlation of forces is something West simply wishes away.” (Emphasis added.)

NOT IN MY BOOK

This is a non-sequitur.

This relates to no part of American Betrayal. I repeat: This Stalin anecdote from the Yalta conference is in no way relevant to what is under discussion in American Betrayal.

The anecdote does, however, appear in both Gaddis and Plokhy, Radosh’s go-to mainstream, conventional consensus academics.

ABOUT OUR LOST MEN

I devote a chapter of American Betrayal to a discussion of American POWs/MIAs.

Chapter 11 of American Betrayal is the hardest chapter of the book to read just as it was the hardest to write because it is about what is the ultimate American betrayal, by successive US administrations, of American fathers, brothers, husbands, sons who became prisoners of war in 20th century conflicts, fell into Soviet hands, and never returned home. Worse, these men do not exist in the history we continue to tell ourselves as if it were true. Among other sources, I draw from a thorough, document-based investigation produced by staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1990, and focus on its findings regarding thousands of American GIs, ex-POWs of World War II, who seem never to have returned from Soviet territory.

“Actually, as Plokhy shows, the Soviets treated American POW’s fairly well,” Radosh writes – although I notice he doesn’t cite any of Plokhy’s evidence, either (I don’t know if there is any).

Here we see a recurrence of the Radosh pattern. Once more, he is holding up a conventional, secondary source – in this case, Plokhy’s book, Yalta: The Price of Peace – and simply declaring that my primary source research is not just wrong but so much “conspiracy theory.”

And, according to this same pattern, Radosh never mentions my primary source research, never frames my argument in the context of my sources, as drawn from 900-plus endnotes.

Regardless of what Plokhy “shows,” American Betrayal shows that from the start “the Soviets” did not treat American POWs in “well” by any standard.

Radosh either did not read my treatment of the subject, or he did not register the harrowing facts laid out therein, or he didn’t wish to present them to readers. Most Americans have never heard this story of betrayal because the US government and the media − and now Radosh – have, in effect or by design, hidden it from them.

I will not reprise the whole chapter here. I will however, provide the necessary background for understanding the extent to which Radosh gets both my book and the historical record wrong.

In the early spring of 1945 (as American Betrayal documents), amid rising frustration and anger on the part of General John R. Deane and Ambassador Averill Harriman, our chief military negotiator and ambassador in Moscow respectively, FDR wrote to Stalin seeking, even demanding permission to send US extraction teams into Soviet-held territory to rescue lost and sick American ex-POWs. To call these the toughest cables to Stalin of FDR’s presidency isn’t saying much, but it’s something. I quote directly from the cable traffic, which includes Roosevelt and Stalin’s exchange.

For the record, here is a partial list of the cables cited in American Betrayal:

- FDR to Stalin, March 3, 1945

- Stalin to FDR, March 5, 1945

- Harriman to FDR, March 8, 1945

- FDR to Harriman, March 11, 1945

- Harriman to Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, March 14, 1945

- Churchill to FDR, March 16, 1945

- FDR to Stalin, March 17, 1945

- Stalin to FDR, March 22, 1945

- FDR to Harriman, March 26, 1945

Now, back to Radosh’s inept or dishonest misrepresentation of my work, which, again, starts:

“Actually, as Plokhy shows, the Soviets treated American POW’s fairly well.”

He continues:

“Nevertheless, contrary to West, FDR `lost his temper with Stalin and sided completely with his representatives in Moscow, who by now were sick and tired of Soviet ways of doing things.

In case it’s not crystal clear, contrary to Radosh. I have laid out in minute and documented detail FDR’s angry if impotent attempt, completely in accord with his team in Moscow, to compel Stalin to permit US teams to extract our men from Red-held territories.

In other words, Radosh is making stuff up again.

THIS TIME, IT’S IN MY BOOK

Nonetheless, Radosh continues to criticize me for failing to include such information, which, contrary to Radosh, is, in fact, contained in American Betrayal:

Radosh:

“He [FDR] sent stern messages to Stalin inspired by Averell Harriman, no pro-Soviet stooge, who was angered by the dictator’s behavior.“

We know about both FDR’s and Harriman’s cables – from American Betrayal.

In other words, it’s in my book.

Radosh now veers once again into non-sequitur, writing:

“FDR said to Anna Rosenberg Hoffman, his unofficial advisor on labor matters, “Averell is right: we can’t do business with Stalin. He has broken every one of his promises he made at Yalta.” He said this on March 24; a few weeks before his death.”

“I looked in vain for that statement in West’s book.”

Why is Radosh looking in vain for a statement that is not relevant to American Betrayal? Because it’s in Plokhy?

As with the “separate peace” fear factor, or Stalin’s “correlation of forces,” Radosh is looking for the old, familiar notes of consensus (read: liberal) narrative in my book. He wants to be able to hum along to the old, familiar conventional (read: liberal) strains he already “knows” – and, apparently, wants everyone else humming along to forever.

He goes on, as if making a slam-dunk debating point:

“What is in West’s book is a condemnation of FDR for not doing more, for not scheduling retaliatory measures, and for not taking the advice of those who advocated turning against the Soviets although the war was not yet over.”

In fact, the war, at least for American and British armies in late March 1945, was largely a matter of being restrained or diverted so the Red Army could take up its positions in Berlin, Prague and Vienna. Except for that gross oversight, Ronald Radosh has actually written a factual statement about my book.

I notice, however, he doesn’t share my abhorrence at the failure of FDR and other US officials to do more to save thousands of American GIs, former POWs of Nazi Germany, who, according to the document trail presented in American Betrayal, appear to have been liberated from Nazi POW camps only to be imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag.

A word about “retaliatory measures.” The phrase is Averill Harriman’s, whom Radosh singles out for praise elsewhere in his review, but does not acknowledge in this instance. Rather than permit the conventional military understanding of “retaliatory measures” stand, I will turn to Harriman’s explanation on pp. 316-317 of American Betrayal:

“On March 14, 1945, Harriman cabled the whole sorry story [of Soviet intransigence on POW negotiations] to the secretary of state. He detailed Soviet obstruction of U.S. evacuation and medical teams waiting to enter Soviet-captured territory; the “serious hardships” of sick and wounded American GIs after years of war and privation in German prison camps; and obvious Soviet evasions of responsibility, as when Foreign Minister Molotov tried to blame the (Soviet-controlled) Polish Provisional Government for the pure-Moscow snafu.

“Then Harriman suggested something novel and sensible. In the event that a follow-up cable from Roosevelt failed to move Stalin, the administration should consider `retaliatory measures.’ What a concept. Harriman suggested restricting the movement of Soviet contact officers riffling through Displaced Persons camps in the Western zone for hapless returnees (there were over 150 Soviets at Eisenhower’s own headquarters where a special section of the staff was designated to assist them; Americans and British had no equivalent setup with the Red Army), or perhaps halting further consideration of `non-military’ Lend-Lease material (Stalin was angling for another big `loan’). Harriman also recommended something even more effective—something for the ages. Harriman tentatively suggested `that consideration be given to allowing our prisoners of war en route to Naples to give stories to the newspapers of the hardships they have been subjected to’ in the Soviet zone.

“This was what was lacking, and this was what was needed. At any point, exposure, loud and clear, could have changed the U.S.-USSR dynamic in every way. It was the reality that We, the People were almost always, always deprived of in order to drive the Soviet conspiracy of Western silence forward, fueled by acquiescence, accommodation, participation and incorporation of all the Big Lies going back to the very first, the Terror Famine.

“Dream on.”

Continuing his pattern of overlooking what is actually in the book, Radosh sums up by criticizing me again for something that isn’t in the book – namely, Truman’s “line in the sand opposing further Soviet expansion” that “led to a Cold War that ended with the collapse of the Communist system.”

I “show no awareness” of the Truman doctrine, Radosh writes; nor, he continues, do I confront this argument “because it would be inexplicable if America was a Soviet occupied state run by Stalin’s agents.”

Having been through the excruciating exercise of rebutting this “review,” I have come to see more clearly that Radosh’s undue focus on criticizing me for elements that are not covered in my book – in this case, Truman’s “line in the sand” – is a sustained if desperate act of misdirection. We are all supposed to look at Truman’s “line in the sand,” Stalin’s “correlation of forces,” and the “separate-peace” fear factor, etc. – and nothing else. We are certainly not supposed to look behind the curtain at what Soviet agents, fellow travelers and dupes might have been doing back in de-facto-occupied-Washington to promote or use or be influenced by these same elements as ways and means to shape US policy-making.

The latter, of course, is exactly what American Betrayal does, It does not, once again, characterize wartime Washington as a “Soviet-occupied state” akin to Poland under Jaruzelski, as Radosh’s phraseology repeatedly and distortingly implies.

MY TRUE CRIME REVEALED − AGAIN

I can only surmise that my offense, once more, is to have written a book outside the confines of the conventional consensus narrative that Radosh wants to read, over and over again – and, more important, wants everyone else to keep reading. The sources I list, which Radosh consistently fails to acknowledge  while falsely and repeatedly impugning my credibility, temperament and even sanity (“unhinged”) – simply do not support this narrative of conventional consensus academia which Radosh upholds. Thus, no “Truman’s line in the sand.” No “correlation of forces.” No “Anna Rosenberg Hoffman.”

Is this why David Horowitz wrote: “She should not have written this book”?

CHAPTER 2

AGGRESSIVELY ATTACKED DETAIL #1: “19”

For the remainder, I will be defending a series of details isolated by Radosh, one in each of the remaining four sections of his attack. The Radosh technique here is to build each detail into a supposed “pillar” of my “conspiracy thesis,” distort and misconstrue it, and then try to take it down.

Indeed, one commenter on the Radosh “take-down” seized on this discernible pattern. He observed that the Radosh method is “to aggressively attack a detail in a text – of course with the intention to disturb the holistic impression.” He called the technique the “Language of Violence.”[9]

The Radosh review – a series of aggressive attacks on details – leaves no “holistic impression” of American Betrayal. Nor can I, for that matter, leave a “holistic impression” of my own book in my rebuttal, alas.

The most aggressive Radosh attack on detail is his “claim” regarding “Agent 19.” It appears to be part of an all-out, no-holds-barred effort to protect Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s top wartime advisor, from consideration as a Soviet spy or agent of influence, perhaps in an effort to preserve Roosevelt’s place on history’s pedestal.

Radosh begins:

“A key assertion for West is that FDR’s closest advisor, Harry Hopkins, was actually the Soviet agent known in the Venona decrypts as “Agent 19.”

Worth noting is that in this first sentence Radosh has not only distorted my work, he has misstated the work of the late Eduard Mark, who, in a famous 1998 essay, identified “19” as Hopkins, but did not ever identify Hopkins as a “Soviet agent.”

Radosh continues:

“The identification of Hopkins as Agent 19 is the linchpin of West’s conspiracy case.”

Radosh has made another categorically false statement about my book (which he continues, gratingly, to label a “conspiracy case”). In fact, I once again re-enter the surreal dimension of this rebuttal to deny yet another feature that is not in my book.

I performed an electronic search of American Betrayal to quantify quickly for readers the extent to which this claim − that the identification of Hopkins as “19” is the ”linchpin” of anything in my book − is false.

My book’s 403 pages include 900-plus endnotes, which I keep mentioning because Radosh did not. After searching, I find that Hopkins’ name appears on 107 pages. My discussion of the Eduard Mark thesis that Harry Hopkins was “Agent 19” is confined to two pages. There are several passing references.

“Agent 19” is hardly the “linchpin” of my book. (I trust my discussion and debunking has already dispelled the repetitious, poisonous charge that American Betrayal is a “conspiracy case.”)

In fact, I use the Mark thesis to kick off my own search for a wider dossier on Hopkins. In other words, having introduced the Mark thesis on p. 147, I all but leave it behind on p. 148 to seek my own Hopkins sources and references in order to assess for myself whether he might be described as a Soviet agent or at least an agent of influence (see note for partial list of my Hopkins sources[10]).

Radosh writes:

It is one thing to point this out [Hopkins’ “pro-Soviet” beliefs] and analyze its implications, and quite another to claim that Hopkins was an actual Soviet agent, a claim that is not original with West, although it is, in fact, not true.

Notably, Radosh does not mention the authorities who label Harry Hopkins a Soviet agent, so I will.

In his 1990 book KGB, co-written with Christopher Andrew, Oleg Gordievsky (former KGB colonel and British double agent), recalled that as a young KGB officer he attended a lecture given by Iskhak Akhmerov, the most renowned KGB “illegal” spymaster of the World War II period. Akhmerov, Gordievsky wrote, told the assembly at KGB headquarters that the most important of all the Soviet wartime agents in the United States was none other than Harry Hopkins.

The late Herbert Romerstein, a towering expert on espionage and Soviet subversion, having studied the matter for himself, agreed.

Radosh breezily states this is “in fact, not true,” but that’s no argument.

Radosh now takes the reader into his confidence to spread a little slander:

“When I sent her a collegial email questioning this assertion, and requesting that we get together to talk about it, she became quite huffy: `Dialoguing is one thing,’ she emailed back; `issuing directives is another.’ ”

Rather than take up too much space to demolish this childish and dishonest aside, I will simply quote the opening of that “collegial email” Radosh sent me, and note there was no request to get together.

“Diana,

“You have to acknowledge that you and [M. Stanton Evans] are dead wrong about Hopkins. …”

Once again, Radosh is making stuff up.

Having demonstrated that the Hopkins/”19” matter is in no way the “linchpin” of my book (or “West’s conspiracy case,” as Radosh keeps repeating), I will now point out that Hopkins/”19” is a linchpin of the Radosh attack on American Betrayal.

Having over-inflated the significance of Hopkins/”19” in my book (two pages) to a point of absurdity, Radosh sets out to destroy Hopkins/”19” as a valid argument and, in the process, destroy the book. To do so, he cites John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, whose latest published work − as of 2013, after my manuscript was complete (to debunk another Radosh charge that I neglected more recent Haynes’ commentary on Hopkins/”19”) – contends that Mark’s 1998 thesis was wrong due to numerous references in the Vassiliev notebooks (copies of KGB documents) identifying Soviet agent Lawrence Duggan as “19.”

Then Radosh goes further still – and maybe a little too far. He describes a dramatic scene at a 2009 gathering of espionage experts and authors that he helped preside over at the Wilson Center in Washington. Among those present were Michael Dobbs, M. Stanton Evans, John Earl Haynes, Mark Kramer, Herbert Romerstein, and Alexander Vassiliev.

Eduard Mark died the following week. Romerstein passed away in May of this year.

In his “take-down,” Radosh writes that in front of this august company, Mark “publicly” recanted his 1998 findings that identified Hopkins as “19.”

Radosh reports this as the final point of this “19” section, climactically concluding:

“At a conference on Soviet espionage held a week before his untimely death, West’s source, Eduard Mark, publicly stated that he now acknowledged that Harry Hopkins was not Agent 19, and that the conclusion he had reached in his 1998 article was false.”

… OR DID HE?

If Radosh is correctly reporting Mark’s public recantation of his Hopkins/”19” paper circa 2009, why did Radosh send me an email on June 13, 2013 on this topic, reprising the same arguments (Mark was wrong about Hopkins/”19,” Duggan was “19”) that concluded:

“Were Mark still alive, I’m certain he would have conceded the point.”

What was that again? If Mark were still alive … he would have conceded the point?

This construction of Radosh’s sentence clearly indicates that Mark did not concede the point – at least not while he was alive.

In this same email of June 13, Radosh also quotes John Haynes, another participant of the 2009 conference, as having “just” emailed Radosh that “Ed Mark was wrong about 19….”

Haynes’ message to Radosh also suggests that the Mark thesis was still standing − not that Mark had recanted the whole thing in front of the experts four years earlier.

It is worth noting Haynes also treated the Mark thesis as current in a January 2013 essay arguing that “19” was Laurence Duggan. Referring to Mark, Duggan wrote: “But on the matter of Venona 812 he and I disagreed.”

Note that he didn’t say, “He and I disagreed until Mark publicly recanted his paper’s findings in 2009.”

In August, however, two months after Radosh e-mailed me stating with certainty that had Mark lived, he would have conceded the “19” point, everything was different.

In his self-described “take-down” of American Betrayal in August, Radosh states with certainty that Mark in 2009 “publicly stated … that the conclusion he had reached in his 1998 article was false.”

Later, in a paper on “19” Haynes co-authored with Harvey Klehr, the authors include a footnote referencing the public 2009 recantation: “During one of the question-and-answer periods and in informal conversations at the symposium Mark remarked that the Vassiliev notebooks had convinced him that `19’ was Duggan and he no longer held to his 1998 position. He died unexpectedly shortly after the symposium and, consequently, never published a formal statement on the matter.”

You know what? It’s one or the other. It’s not both.

PART THREE

CHAPTER 3

THE AGRESSIVELY ATTACKED DETAIL #2: URANIUM

The next aggressive attack on detail is plucked from the colossal Lend-Lease program the US created to supply allies during World War II. Supplying the Soviet Union was a bitter pill for the American people to swallow. FDR whoppers – such as declaring religious freedom existed in the USSR – didn’t help. But supply “Uncle Joe” we did – and to a needlessly dangerous extreme, I conclude from the sources contained in my book.

From American Betrayal, p. 43:

War supplies didn’t just “flow” to the Soviet Union, they flooded it, with over half a million trucks and jeeps, nearly $1 billion worth (1940s dollars) of ordnance and ammunition, thousands of fighter aircraft, bombers, and tanks, 13 million pairs of winter boots, 1.7 million tons of petroleum products, a merchant fleet, 1,000 steam locomotives, 581 naval vessels including minesweepers, landing craft, submarine chasers, frigates, torpedo boats, floating dry docks, pontoon barges, river tugs, and a light cruiser. There were also icebreakers, which were essential to keep the northernmost ports of the Gulag Archipelago supplied with fresh slaves, another “lost” fact. American Lend-Lease didn’t just keep the Soviet police state humming along internally, either. As Nikita Khrushchev would say to Life magazine in 1970 of those half a million trucks and jeeps, “Just imagine how we would have advanced from Stalingrad to Berlin without them!”

Radosh, of course, doesn’t mention any of that. He writes:

“West also insists that Lend-Lease aid was a crucial `rogue operation’ orchestrated by Hopkins and the NKVD for the purpose of getting not only war supplies to the Russians, but “the materials that go into making an atomic bomb…up to and including uranium.” (Her emphasis.)”

This, of course, is supposed to sound appropriately “unhinged” if not “crackpot” – just so many more “yellow journalism conspiracy theories.”

My italics underscore the historical fact that a US government program run by a suspected Soviet agent of influence procured three-quarters of a ton of uranium (including Manhattan-Project-embargoed uranium) and other atomic materials for Stalin. Additionally, as George Racey Jordan writes in From Major Jordan’s Diaries, his memoir of Lend-Lease, “It seems fair to take into account not merely what the Russians got, but what they tried to get.”

This was a huge news story in 1950 and then it virtually vanished from our “narrative,” a matter I explore in depth in American Betrayal.

I do not, however, “insist,” as Radosh claims, that “Hopkins and the NKVD” “orchestrated” Lend-Lease. Once again, he is exaggerating a fact to deride his own exaggeration..

In this case, however, the reality is too not much different.

What is in my book is that it was Harry Hopkins, Armand Hammer, and Harry Dexter White who got Lend-Lease going in the first place – a trio of veritable Soviet assets. Rather than convey these alarming facts as laid out in American Betrayal, Radosh invokes the “NKVD,” as if to inspire snickers. You can almost hear jackboots stomping through the White House.

Then again, the NKVD did have a line of sorts into Lend Lease for real. Over security objections of both the State and War Departments and Army chief of staff Gen. George C. Marshall, Hopkins insisted on elevating Army officer Philip Faymonville, a.k.a. the “Red Colonel,” to run Lend-Lease in Moscow. There, Soviet records show, Faymonville was recruited by the NKVD in 1942.

NKVD recruit Faymonville would help run − “orchestrate?” − Lend-Lease for the duration.

As for my discussion of Lend-Lease as “rogue operation,” I frame it with a question and end it with a question.

We’ll start on p. 128:

“… Just because Lend-Lease, in effect, said everything was all right—even as Lend-Lease cogs Jordan and Kravchenko knew that what was going on wasn’t all right— was the Lend-Lease atomic flow, indeed, all right, kosher, and aboveboard from the point of view and national interest of Uncle Sam? Or was Lend-Lease covering up a rogue operation? Was Lend-Lease, as run out of the White House by the president’s top adviser Harry Hopkins, itself a rogue operation?

Eleven pages and 44 endnotes later, I pose another question:

“From Hammer to Hopkins to White and back again to Hopkins: The question now becomes, How could Lend-Lease not have been a rogue operation?”

Take my arguments or leave them. But don’t distort them.

ON THE AGGRESSIVELY ATTACKED DETAIL OF URANIUM

As “19” was attacked (above) to obscure American Betrayal’s widely sourced and -detailed discourse on Harry Hopkins, the new detail under attack is “a” (as in “one”) shipment of uranium.

That would seem bad enough, of course. Why was Harry Hopkins’s Lend-Lease scouring all over creation for uranium for Stalin?

For a reality check, I’ll note that when Gen. Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, testified on this subject of uranium shipments to the USSR before Congress in 1949, he could not answer how many shipments of uranium Lend-Lease had in fact transferred to Stalin, because, he said, “we don’t know how many leaked through.”

Radosh, however, discusses only one shipment that Groves did indeed permit to go through, against his will, rather than alert the Soviets to the value we were placing on uranium during this period of frantic, top secret atomic research. Radosh repeatedly insists this was the only shipment to go through – and cites another book to supposedly prove this, completely ignoring the additional evidence contained in American Betrayal that trumps Radosh’s source.

What evidence? A Congressional investigation, quoted on p. 124 of American Betrayal:

I quote the March 3, 1950, testimony of Donald T. Appell, former FBI agent and investigator for the House Committee on Un-American Activities, regarding uranium shipments to the USSR in 1943: “As to the shipment of uranium and heavy water, two specific shipments of uranium oxide and nitrate and shipments of heavy water have been completely documented to include even the number of the plane that flew the uranium and heavy water out of Great Falls.”

The note is: “Hearings into the Transfer of Atomic Material to the Soviet Union During World War II,” 1149.

A third documented uranium shipment to Stalin went overland in July 1944.

Just as with my “second front” debate, the FDR-Stalin cables, my discussion of ex-POWs in Stalin’s clutches, my non-“19” Hopkins dossier, Radosh has completely and missed or purposefully ignored my documented evidence − and then aggressively attacked me for it.

OUT OF CONTEXT DISTORTIONS AND/OR SLOPPINESS

Radosh writes:

“She refers to Lend-Lease as “the plunder of atomic secrets … spirited out of the country on a U.S.-government sponsored flight. The reference is to a shipment of uranium to Russia in 1943, allegedly orchestrated by Harry Hopkins as Agent 19.” (Emphasis added,)

In fact, the quotation of mine Radosh cites happens not to relate uranium at all. It’s not about Harry Hopkins. It’s not about “Agent 19.”

I endeavor to be brief, but I must reproduce the whole citation to prove Radosh’s sloppiness.

In fact, my reference to “plunder” relates to an extensive listing of items recorded by Maj. George Racey Jordan, US Army “expediter” of Lend-Lease. Jordan claimed he discovered the following items in a US government-sponsored flight to Russia as it was about to take off from the Lend-Lease hub in Great Falls, Montana.

The list included (p. 123 of American Betrayal):

Road maps … pinpointing American industrial sites (“Westinghouse,” “Blaw-Knox”). Maps of the Panama Canal Zone. Documents related to the Aberdeen Proving Ground, “one of the most ‘sensitive’ areas in the war effort.” Folders stuffed with naval and shipping intelligence. Stacks of papers on oil refineries, machine tools, steel foundries, and the like. Groups of documents on stationery from the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and State, “trimmed close to the text,” Jordan noted, perhaps to save weight—or remove “Secret” or “Restricted” stamps (or both). Folders from the State Department Jordan claimed were marked “From Sayre”—that would be Francis Sayre, who hired Alger Hiss—and “From Hiss,” Soviet spy Alger Hiss himself. Engineering and scientific treatises that “bristled with formulae, calculations and professional jargon.” Something very, very interesting I will describe a little farther down attached to a thick map bearing the legend that Jordan recorded as “Oak Ridge, Manhattan Engineering District” (remember, this was taking place sometime in the winter of 1943–44, before the invention, or public knowledge, of the atomic bomb). He also found a carbon copy of a report from “Oak Ridge” containing a series of “outlandish” words Jordan made a note to look up later: “cyclotron,” “proton,” “deuteron.” There were also “curious” phrases, he wrote, “energy produced by fission” and “walls five feet thick, of lead and water, to control flying neutrons.”

Then, Jordan writes, “For the first time in my life, I met the word ‘uranium.’ ”

[I comment:] Why, in all of our inherited historical legacy, has there been no room for this wartime witness to the plunder of atomic secrets just as they were being spirited out of the country on a U.S. government-sponsored flight?

Plenty of “plunder” here, to be sure. But no uranium shipment. No Hopkins. No “19.”

Radosh continues: “To her, this proves that the Lend-Lease Act ‘was a slam-dunk victorious Soviet influence operation.’ ”

Remember: “This” (the particular list of “plunder”), in fact, had nothing to do with uranium or Hopkins. True to sloppy form, Radosh’s reference to the “slam-dunk influence operation” applies not to uranium or Hopkins, but instead to the fact that three Soviet assets – Hammer, Hopkins and White – got Lend-Lease off the ground in the first place.

He continues:

“Or, as she refers to Lend-Lease at the end of her book: `All that American booty pirated by Harry Hopkins for Mother Russia.’ ”

Taking this particular quotation out of context greatly bothers me.

The context is the recollection of a witness, a national of the former Soviet Union, who discusses his memories of American prisoners, ex-soldiers or ex-POWs, who moved through the Gulag Archipelago. One of his anecdotes recounts four American prisoners of a Gulag mining camp working as mechanics on “mobile electric power stations that reached Chaunskaya Guba under the Lend-Lease program.”

This was a wholly unexpected allusion to Lend-Lease to come across while reading about our ex-POWs in the USSR. My comment is as follows: (American Betrayal, p. 338):

“The Lend-Lease program—again. All that American booty pirated by Harry Hopkins for Mother Russia. And what a terrible taunt to our men to have had to tune up good ol’ American equipment in the desolate Arctic reaches of the Gulag.”

Radosh ignores this context of, yes, American betrayal and seizes on the quotation − “All that American booty pirated by Harry Hopkins” − as more evidence of what he characterizes as my “conspiratorial” if not also “unhinged” “claims” about Lend-Lease.

He continues:

“These claims, which lie at the heart of her conspiracy theory, are demonstrably wrong, and show that she even fails to understand the nature of unrefined uranium the Soviets actually received under Lend-Lease, which was not strategic in terms of making an atomic weapon.”

Here, again we see Radosh inflating my discussion of uranium and attack his own inflation.

I do not claim that the uranium Lend-Lease shipped was “strategic in terms of making an atomic weapon.” I discuss uranium, not weapons grade, “strategic” or “crucial.”

Radosh now goes on, book-report-style, into an irrelevant discourse on the state of Soviet technology based on Stalin and the Bomb, a 1996 book by Stanford’s David Holloway.

To underscore: this discussion is wholly and completely irrelevant to American Betrayal. That is, the state of Soviet labs in no way negates the unceasing Soviet efforts to procure uranium stocks from the US during the war, and, simultaneously, the unceasing pressure brought to bear on the Manhattan Project by the Lend-Lease bureaucracy to release uranium stocks to the Soviets. This is part of what I chronicle in American Betrayal.

But Radosh criticizes me for not following Holloway’s conventional research track. He writes:

All of this information can be found in David Holloway’s definitive study. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956, which West seems not to be aware of.”

Maybe that’s because this “definitive study” has so little to do with my book. Further, Holloway’s depiction of events is in fact deficient. True, Gen. Groves, for example, consented to an export license for uranium metal; however, Holloway (at least as quoted by Radosh) does not convey that this was done expressly because, as Groves would tell Congress, “we were very interested in knowing if anyone [in the US] knew how to make the metal.” Another Soviet application for uranium was approved, Groves said, only “with the idea of smoking them out [the Soviets] and seeing if they could get it.” Groves believed the embargo he placed on uranium exports was holding.

Not so – although neither Holloway nor Radosh tell this part of the story. In 1949, after Stalin exploded an atomic bomb, former US Army Lend-Lease “expediter” Major George Racey Jordan went public with his claim that he had shipped uranium to the Russian during World War II, and that Harry Hopkins was personally involved. Groves had no idea the Manhattan Project’s embargo had been broken until Jordan spoke up. What I do in American Betrayal is weigh Jordan’s testimony and reports, explain what aspects of his story have been corroborated and what have not. I examine Congressional investigations, histories, memoirs and the like. I pay close attention, for example, to the case of the great Soviet defector Victor Kravchenko, author of I Chose Freedom, who defected from the Soviet Lend-Lease office in Washington, DC. Jordan and Kravchenko had worked on opposite sides of Lend-Lease during World War II, but in dramatic testimonies before Congress after the war they would confirm relevant sections of each other’s stories.

Radosh channeling Holloway describes none of this. Instead, he drones on about the state of Soviet technology at the time, which is another giant non sequitur: “bomb-grade U-235 … 0.7 percent of natural uranium … U-238 … isotopes … mining … refining … alloys … plutonium … Laboratory No. 2… urgent … uranium problem …”

He finally ties it all back to me. The Soviets were having a “uranium problem,” he writes.

“Had the Hopkins flight provided the material Diana West says gave them the material for the bomb, all this concern would have been unnecessary.”

Surreal time again: I didn’t say “the” (incorrect article) “Hopkins flight” gave the Soviets “the material for the bomb.” Simultaneously minimizing my evidence while also inflating (aggressively attacking) one detail, Radosh mixes everything up again to put across something that is not in my book.

My discussion is specifically related to “three shipments totaling nearly three-quarters of a ton” of uranium (American Betrayal, p. 140). Whether this was “the material” for “the bomb,” as Radosh hyperbolizes, it was highly significant, particularly given the lengths to which Harry Hopkins’ Lend-Lease went to get it, even breaking Gen. Leslie Groves’ embargo to do it.

Radosh continues:

“Technical questions aside, in concocting her conspiracy theory of Lend-Lease as a Soviet plot to help Russia win the war and build an atomic bomb, West refuses to consider a range of political realities that had nothing to do with Kremlin agents.” (Emphasis added.)

Here we go again. First, as I have demonstrated time and again, Radosh is not a reliable source as to what I have “refused” or not refused to consider. Second, once again, Radosh is impugning me for failing to following the conventional consensus on “political realities that had nothing to do with Kremlin agents.”

My book concocts nothing, and I advance no conspiracy theory. In 1950, the US Congress was able to establish the facts of a plan executed from within the Roosevelt administration bureaucracies to thwart the top-secret Manhattan Project’s embargo on uranium shipments to Stalin. That’s no theory, and it fits the definition of a conspiracy.

Naturally, this is not covered in Holloway, Radosh’s latest liberal professor of choice. How could it be there? Holloway doesn’t draw from the same sources I draw from. There is no Jordan memoir of Lend-Lease in his bibliography, no House Un-American Activities Committee Hearings Regarding Shipments of Atomic Materials to the Soviet Union during World War II, no life of Victor Kravchenko, the famous ex-Soviet who defected from Lend-Lease in Washington. Like Gaddis’s book before his, Holloway’s and my stories can’t possibly match.

For breaking out of the conventional groove, from seeing beyond the blinkered liberal consensus − for documenting everything − Radosh sees fit to smear me as “unhinged.”

CHAPTER 4

THE AGGRESSIVELY ATTACKED DETAIL #3: TRUMAN AND VENONA

So far, the aggressive attacks on detail and my credibility seem calculated to protect Harry Hopkins from consideration as an agent of Soviet influence.

In this section, the attacks on my credibility are also about protecting Harry Truman.

From what? From knowledge about Venona. Or, rather, from the American people weighing evidence that as president, Harry Truman received specific allegations of Soviet infiltration of the US government and did nothing – and even elevated at least one such person (Harry Dexter White), while the Truman White House and Justice Department explored pressing perjury charges against a key witness to Soviet espionage inside the US government (Whittaker Chambers).

This, as I argue, is a high point in the American history of betrayal.

But I confess, on writing American Betrayal, I only knew the half of it.

Finally, I can thank Radosh for one piece of criticism that is constructive. Too bad for him, however, that as a result I can more completely demolish this particular critique of American Betrayal. Having done further research, I now find it much easier to punch through the frail edifice he has built around Harry Truman’s purity when it comes to forbidden knowledge of Soviet infiltration.

This particular controversy under consideration here kicked off a decade ago when Jerrold and Leona Schecter published their book Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History. Drawing from the recollections of a noted code-breaker and Venona program official, Oliver Kirby, the Schecters laid out the case that Truman as president was informed about the findings of Venona codebreakers, certainly by 1950, when codebreakers identified Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss as spies.

Radosh sets up his discussion on Venona and Truman like so:

“If Harry Truman, who became president in 1945, knew about the Venona decrypts (first de-classified in 1995), yet failed to pay attention to the evidence they provided of Soviet infiltration, it would bolster West’s claim that Truman was so anxious to avoid offending Stalin that even when confronted with hard evidence of Soviet treachery, he chose to do nothing about it.”

For the record, Radosh has already and again attributed to me something else I didn’t write. Yes, I agree the evidence shows Truman was informed and did nothing about Soviet intelligence operations he learned about through the Venona project and, more important, through the FBI.

Nowhere in my book, however, did I write anywhere that Truman failed to act for fear of “offending Stalin.” There were other reasons. Radosh’s sloppy habits continue.

Why is the FBI more important here than Venona? It turns out that when I was writing American Betrayal I overlooked a truckload of FBI briefs and memos that J. Edgar Hoover sent to Truman and other senior administration officials beginning in 1945. These FBI documents alerted the president and his men to the presence of multiple American traitors in the federal government. Had I included this ample FBI evidence in American Betrayal, which M. Stanton Evans presents in Blacklisted by History,[11] I could have established virtually without doubt the argument now driving Radosh into attack-mode: Truman Knew.

The detail under aggressive Radosh attack in this section is the former Venona/NSA official Oliver Kirby.

The Schecters recount several meetings Kirby described or took part in.

Here are two of them in brief.

MEETING 1

The first meeting sourced to Kirby took place on June 4, 1945, between Gen. Carter W. Clarke and Col. Ernest Gibson, both of Army intelligence, and Truman, and it lasted 15 minutes. (That the meeting took place has been verified.) While the G-2 officers could offer neither specific names nor operations to the president, they brought bad news nonetheless: As the Schecters write (source Kirby), “Clarke told the president that… initial work on the Soviet [cable] traffic indicated large scale Soviet intelligence operations in the United States.”

Radosh, contending these findings weren’t available in mid-1945, decides that this proves Truman was wholly innocent of Venona in mid-1945. Even if this were true, what, to coin a phrase, difference does it make? Not knowing in mid-1945 doesn’t render Truman permanently ignorant of Soviet infiltration for the rest of his administration – and certainly not after we recall the numerous, detailed memos that began coming his way a few months later from the FBI.

Radosh, however, insists that my discussion of the motivation behind Truman’s many years of inaction – his partisan political motives, for example, and other possible motives first raised by the Schecters, and so cited (but, in the Alinskyite tradition of isolating a target, transferred by Radosh to me alone) – is completely invalid. He calls it a “fanciful indictment,” as if Truman’s knowledge of Soviet espionage activities inside the US government somehow remains frozen in June 1945 along with, erroneously represented, my discussion.

Odd.

Odder: Once again, this is not what I wrote in my book. I never attempted to pin my analysis to a 15-minute briefing in 1945, but rather to Truman’s entire time in office.

MEETING 2

This is the most significant meeting involving Kirby that the Schecters relate.

“West,” Radosh writes, “then shifts the time frame five years forward” – almost as though there is something suspect is doing so. Radosh now cites my reliance on “an interview” Kirby gave the Schecters in the late 1990s. (In all, the Schecters interviewed Kirby on three occasions. Kirby also gave the Schecters his handwritten notes on this meeting.) Radosh writes: “Kirby told them that both Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White were `positively identified’ in decrypts in 1950, and that he brought this information to General Omar Bradley.”

For the record, there is an important temporal corroboration for Kirby here, as I put it on p. 165 of American Betrayal:

[Kirby] later told the Schecters that in 1950, Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss were both “positively identified” as Soviet agents by Venona codebreakers, a date Robert L. Benson and Michael Warner affirm in their Venona study.”

Notice how Radosh omitted the Benson and Warner confirmation of this date in his retelling of the Kirby tale (above). This is the same methodology he employs throughout. Better to leave the “yellow journalism” impression of “an interview” on the fly that I rely on with no additional confirmation.

Just to pile on, also remember what Truman had already heard about Hiss and White beginning in 1945 from J. Edgar Hoover.

American Betrayal on the 1950 Kirby account continues:

“Kirby himself claimed to have brought this information to the attention of General Bradley, White House point man, as noted, on Venona. Kirby said, “When Bradley called me back later he said, “The President was most upset and agitated by this. Bradley reported President Truman’s words, ‘That G—— D—— stuff. Every time it bumps into us it gets bigger and bigger. It’s likely to take us down.’” The Schecters add, “Kirby said there was no doubt the President understood.”

American Betrayal again:

“In other words, President Truman took in and grasped revelations that, according to Soviet secret cables, the most senior-level, trusted, and powerful U.S. government officials had been working on behalf of the Soviet Union, and then he, as president, did nothing about it. Suddenly, Truman’s domestic anti- Communism program starts to look like a giant act of misdirection. …

Radosh’s misleading comment:

“Once again, West shows that she does not know how to evaluate the reliability of a source or assess the evidence produced. The Schecter interviews with Kirby occurred nearly a half century after the events alleged to have taken place.”

The passage of time doesn’t negate the recollections of a source, and Kirby, as a former key intelligence official charged with briefing the few members of the US government who were permitted Venona information, appears to have to be a solid source. Ten years ago, when the Schecters first published these findings about Truman, columnist Robert Novak reinterviewed Kirby and found him and his story completely credible. (More on that below.)

RADOSH GETS CONFUSED

Radosh continues:

“Even worse, Kirby’s account is third-hand. He claimed that General Clarke told him this at some unspecified time, and acknowledges that he himself was not present at any meeting between Truman and Bradley. Nor is there any documentation to show that such a meeting ever took place.”

Uh-oh. Ronald Radosh has just mixed up two meetings separated by five years into one mess.

Kirby’s account of his 1950 conversation with Bradley is not third-hand. It is first-hand. He had the conversations with Bradley himself. As far as “no documentation” goes, the Schecters cite Kirby’s handwritten notes for this same meeting.

Radosh is wrong again.

The Radosh mix-ups don’t stop. I would certainly let this next one ride but it includes another slap at my credibility.

MEETING 3

Radosh writes:

“Kirby told the Schecters that Clarke had long conversations with Bradley and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal about Venona. But contrary to West’s claim, Kirby acknowledged to the Schecters that he had no notes of this meeting. There is nothing in either Bradley’s or Forrestal’s own papers that would corroborate Kirby’s story. (Emphasis in the original.)

Not in my book.

Let’s be real #1: I actually didn’t write about such a Forrestal meeting as Radosh describes, so there is no “claim” I made regarding it.

Let’s be real #2: Is Radosh saying he has searched Bradley’s and Forrestal’s “own papers” to see if there is anything in them to corroborate Kirby’s story? Or is he just … saying?

Let’s be real #3: Radosh writes about Kirby telling the Schecters that “Clarke had long conversations with Bradley and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal about Venona.” But he’s wrong. It was Kirby who had the long conversations with Bradley and Forrestal! Clarke isn’t even part of this anecdote – at least not in the Schecters’ book.

Maybe Plokhy? Maybe Gaddis? Maybe Rees?

What the Schecters actually write is this: “However, Kirby, who worked for General Clarke, and had long, thoughtful conversations with General Bradley and Secretary Forrestal on VENONA, is certain the president was informed and was part of the dialogue.”

I will conclude this belabored section by noting that this line of Radosh attack is just a bullying and very confused version of an already heated exchange over the same material from the Schecters’ book − what Truman knew about Venona and when he knew it − that took place ten years ago. Back in 2003, the combatants were Haynes and Klehr on the Radosh side, with the late Robert Novak taking the Schecters’ and, by extension, my side today.

In the 2003 exchange − which, for the record, is footnoted in my book on p. 372 in another example of my not disregarding “the findings of the sources she does rely on when they contradict her yellow journalism conspiracy theories,” as I have been so falsely accused of doing − Novak wrote:

“The heart of the dispute is the account by a living witness to these long ago events. Former National Security Agency officer Oliver Kirby told the Schecters and confirmed to me how the "Venona material was presented to Truman by General Omar Bradley. …

“While Klehr and Haynes call Kirby's account `highly unlikely,’ none of his recollections is contradicted as they claim. Kirby's assertions that Truman knew are based on notes he made at the time he worked on Venona, contradicting the Klehr and Haynes dismissal of Kirby's recollections `fifty years after the event.’ The highly praised work by Haynes and Klehr on Venona was based primarily on documents supplied and edited by the government.” (Emphasis added.)

Come to think it, this government-handout aspect to the Venona cables is an excellent point to keep in mind.

Novak: “As serious historians, they would have benefited had they conducted interviews with living participants in the Venona affair rather than engage in unfair and unwarranted attacks on the Schecters and me.”

Not to mention Kirby.

The record the Schecters preserved by interviewing Kirby is at least as debatable today as it was ten years ago, and it should be possible to do so without being smeared for, as Radosh writes yet again, promoting a “vast conspiracy theory.”

The only good to come of this exercise is that I am now aware of the evidence marshaled by M. Stanton Evans that makes it patently clear the extent and depth to which Truman was well-informed by the FBI of Soviet penetration of the federal government – and long before Venona came on line.

There is one more point to make. Radosh also sees Truman’s exoneration in what he describes as “a 1949 FBI memo indicating that Omar Bradley had decided not to inform Truman about the Venona program, which was at the time top-secret.”

That’s not at all what the 1949 FBI memo says. The memo simply states that Gen. Omar Bradley would assume the responsibility for briefing the president or anyone else in authority “if the contents of any of this [Venona] material so demanded.”

The memo doesn’t inform us whether Bradley decided one way or the other; just that he had assumed the responsibility to do so.

Radosh sums up:

“In short, a third key element in West’s vast conspiracy theory is so much hot air.”

Radosh can repeat the phrase “conspiracy theory” all he wants, but the evidence doesn’t back him up.

CHAPTER 5:

THE AGGRESSIVELY ATTACKED DETAIL #4: GEORGE H. EARLE

Chapter 10 of American Betrayal contains the most serious indictment of the US Communist movement for having spawned the traitors, fellow travellers and dupes who worked inside the federal government to advance Stalin’s interests. In so doing, they appear to have successfully thwarted multiple attempts by anti-Nazi, anti-Communist Germans to gain US assistance that might have helped them overthrow Hitler, surrender German armies to US and British forces in exchange for unspecified assistance in keeping the Red Army out of eastern and central Europe – a mission we spent the next four decades fighting to achieve from beleaguered bases in Western Europe. This might have brought World War II to a close much earlier than 1945.

Two high level Roosevelt administration officials – George H. Earle, former governor of Pennsylvania and FDR’s special emissary in Europe, and Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer, a senior war strategist – would write after the war that they believed, if successful, these German Underground efforts might have helped bring World War II to a close as early as 1943.

In other words, there was a chance not taken due to Communist penetration of the policy-making chain in Washington and London that might have saved millions, even tens of millions of lives.

It is the story of these German Underground efforts that I discuss in Chapter 10, and the obstacles they faced in both Washington and London, where pro-Soviet influence – and Soviet influence operators and agents – were able to keep these anti-Nazi, anti-Communists at bay.

Why would that be the case? It was Stalin’s goal to take Europe. In 1943, his Red Army was still inside Russia. At a certain point in my research it began to dawn on me that as far as Stalin and his secret agents were concerned, World War II could conceivably end too soon – before Stalin had extended his evil empire into Europe. I describe this phenomenon at length in American Betrayal.

That’s the story I tell.

SURREALISM RULES

Typically, Radosh has other, wrong ideas – that is, ideas that are not in my book.

He begins:

“Should the United States have joined Germany to fight the Soviet Union? Bizarre as it might sound, this is the fourth pillar of West’s argument.“

You bet it sounds bizarre. In fact, surrealism rules again: Radosh now embarks on another discussion that is not in my book. In other words, what Radosh is calling “the fourth pillar of West’s argument” is not contained within the pages of my book.

He continues with more statements that are not in my book:

“In her effort to paint the Roosevelt administration as a puppet of Soviet intelligence, she argues that towards the end of the war, the American government turned down the opportunity to arm German soldiers willing to form a new army to go to war against the USSR. “

Surrealism still rules: I never discuss any “opportunity” the US government “turned down” to “arm German soldiers.” Such a subject never comes up. None of these German efforts got farther than extending “peace feelers” and making inquiries. That is the whole point of the chapter.

Once again, the question forms: Did Radosh read my book? Did he understand what he read? Or did he purposefully distort it?

Radosh continues:

“American leaders were so pro-Soviet, in other words, that they missed one final opportunity to halt the Red Army’s advance into Eastern Europe, thereby delivering these countries to Stalin’s tender mercies and precipitating the Cold War.“

“American leaders” are not part of this part of the story of Chapter 10. I discuss at length the parleys between various American (and some English) representatives abroad, most of whom had connections to the OSS, with various anti-Nazi, anti-Communist Germans. These efforts invariably reach a point at which the Americans (or English) are blocked from moving up the command chain, more often than not from choke points manned or influenced by a Soviet agent or asset.

RADOSH MISSES (AND DISTORTS) THE CRUX OF MY THESIS – AGAIN

He continues:

“Her case rests on a story told by FDR’s old friend and former Governor of Pennsylvania, George H. Earle.”

This is a falsehood. No, it’s a lie. But thus begins Radosh’s last aggressive attack on detail: George H. Earle.

It is utterly false and absurd to say that my case rests on “a story” told by Earle.

Earle published his account of his work with the German Underground in an August 1958 article titled “F.D.R.’s Tragic Mistake” in Confidential magazine.

Here are some of my other sources besides Earle:

Ÿ  Allen Dulles, Germany’s Underground (New York: Macmillan, 1947).

Ÿ  “Full Story of Anti-Hitler Plot Shows That Allies Refused to Assist,” New York Times, March 18, 1946.

Ÿ  “Gen. Menzies, Ex-British Intelligence Chief, Dies,” New York Times, May 31, 1968.

Ÿ  “Eisenhower Praises Anti-Nazi Resistance,” New York Times, May 11, 1945.

Ÿ  Peter Hoffman, The History of the German Resistance, 1933–1945, 3rd English ed. (Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 2001)

Ÿ  “Canaris Hanging Related,” New York Times, October 11, 1952.

Ÿ  “Lubavitch Jews Want Admiral Canaris Honoured by Yad Vashem,” Agence France Presse, August 6, 2009,
http://www.ejpress.org/article/38250. “Following historical research we have established that Admiral Canaris saved Rabbi Yosef Schneerson—sixth in that lineage—and 500 other Jews from the Warsaw ghetto,” said [Rabbi Benjamin] Lipshitz.”

Ÿ  Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind (New York: Vintage Books, 1981)

Ÿ  Ian Colvin, Hitler’s Secret Enemy (London: Pan Books, 1957).

Ÿ  Harry Hopkins Papers, Georgetown University Library.

Ÿ  Richard Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency (Guilford, CT:
Lyons Press, 2005), 368, quoting Secret and Personal, by F. W. Winterbotham (New York: HarperCollins,
1969).

Ÿ  Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Is Paris Burning? How Paris Miraculously Escaped Hitler’s
Sentence of Death in August 1944 (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1991).

Ÿ  Vassiliev’s White Notebook No. 3 notes (133) that Neumann’s KGB recruitment was approved on January 2, 1943. In 1942, Vassiliev’s notes also reveal, three still unidentified KGB agents considered Neumann
“pro-Soviet.”

Ÿ  Jürgen Heideking and Christof Mauch, eds., American Intelligence and the German Resistance to Hitler: A
Documentary History (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996).

Ÿ  Alexander Vassiliev Papers, White Notebook No. 1 Translation, 51, http://www.scribd.com/doc/84608249
/Alexander-Vassiliev-Papers-White-Notebook-No-1-Translation.

Ÿ  Robert Stripling, Red Plot Against America

Ÿ  Peter Niblo, Influence

Ÿ  Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins

Ÿ  FRUS: The Conferences at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943, 506. This record, by the way, wasn’t published until 1968—twenty-five years after the conference!

Ÿ  George McJimsey, Hopkins, 277. FRUS: Washington and Casablanca, 703.

Ÿ  Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports!

Ÿ  B. H. Liddell Hart, The German Generals Talk (New York: William Morrow, 1948), 292–93; see also Manly, Twenty-Year Revolution, 122–23.

Ÿ  M. B. B. Biskupski, Hollywood’s War with Poland

Ÿ  Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, The Rape of Poland (New York: Whittlesey House, 1948), 25.

Ÿ  M. Stanton Evans, Blacklisted by History, 95–97.

Ÿ  Klaus P. Fischer, Hitler and America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 237.

Ÿ  John Dietrich, The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy (New York: Algora Publishing, 2002)

Ÿ  Geoffrey T. Hellman, “Profiles—House Guest II,” New Yorker, August 14, 1943

Ÿ  Bentley testimony of May 29, 1952, Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments, Report of the
Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws to the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 83rd Congress, 1st Session, July 30, 1953, http://www.archive.org/stream/interlockingsubv1953unit/interlockingsubv1953unit_djvu.txt.

Ÿ  Douglas Waller, Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage (New York: Free Press, 2011)

Ÿ  Sudoplatov and Sudoplatov, Special Tasks

Ÿ  Francis Biddle Papers, Georgetown Special
Collections

Radosh continues:

“She spends pages relating how Earle contacted German intelligence chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris in 1943, and tried to persuade him to accept U.S. “peace feelers.” Although this is another well-known episode, West organizes the material to make the reader believe that it was ignored when first made public years ago, and that her own book is finally revealing its momentous significance.”

Alas, if it’s so “well-known,” you would think Radosh would get the facts straight. But no. Canaris contacted Earle (not vice versa). Canaris issued the “peace feelers” to Roosevelt, which were conveyed to no avail to Hopkins, most likely, by Earle (not vice versa).

Radosh mixes everything up again.

As for me organizing material first made public “years ago”: What was that ho hum book about the Rosenbergs’ guilt somebody co-wrote three decades after Judge Kaufman found the atomic spies guilty as charged?

MY TRUE CRIME REVEALED - AGAIN

Radosh continues:

“It is apparent that West is unfamiliar with much of the research that has been done on World War II, or the fact that her counterfactual speculations are not regarded as realistic possibilities by any reputable historian of the era.”

Here we go again.

My “speculations” are “counterfactual” only so long as Radosh hides my copious sources.

Similarly, such “speculations” are “not regarded as realistic possibilities” so long as my sources remain hidden.

I am not a “reputable [read: liberal, conventional] historian of the era” because I am drawing from sources that are usually ignored so that I might try to better understand history of this era.

Those “reputable” historians Radosh cites not to debate me but to impugn me continually fail to consider evidence of Soviet infiltration of the US policy-making-chain as important enough to include in the “reputable” histories they write and teach.

No thanks.

Now that I’ve uncovered the larger canvas, both front and back, and the broader stage, both in public view and behind the scenes, there is no returning to the blinkered, false narrative again.

THE LAST LECTURE FROM THE LIBERAL, MAINSTREAM ORTHODOXY

Radosh:

“She does not seem to know the context of the decisions that FDR, Churchill and the generals in the field made, or appreciate the factors they had to take into account. Or more likely she prefers to ignore them because her theories could not survive the encounter.”

Again, I have found a larger, grimier, and, in my opinion, more realistic context in which to assess all of those decisions and factors. Meanwhile, Radosh, as has been established repeatedly, cannot be trusted to determine what theories I ignore or consider, He clearly doesn’t know himself what I have written.

RADOSH’S PLAGIARISM CALUMNY

It gets worse.

Radosh:

“West has read historian Laurence Rees’ World War II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis, and the West British Book Award Book of the Year for History in 2009 and also the basis for a BBC television documentary which was aired on all American PBS stations.”

Just what is he getting at?

“West cites Rees in her text, and clearly much of her account comes from his own findings and work. “

I get it. Radosh is saying I read Rees, watched the TV show and copied “his own findings and work.”

This is outrageous. I do cite Rees about six times in my book, but not in the German section, as Radosh now implies. That’s because Rees, except for about two sentences in one paragraph, doesn’t report the story of the German Underground that I happen to develop into a chapter of 15,000 words with 78 endnotes.

This less-than-oblique charge of plagiarism is a lie.

Radosh continues in this ugly and outrageous vein:

“When I myself read about George H. Earle’s advice to FDR in West’s book, it sounded very familiar, until I realized I had read the same account, with the same quotes and detail in Rees’ book.”

I utterly and completely reject this non-specific, non-sourced charge of plagiarism, too.

MY TRUE CRIME REVEALED – AGAIN

He continues:

“But she has ignored all the evidence Rees assembles in his book, and all the arguments he makes that refute her conclusions.”

Here we go again. I have used a different and, particularly in this case, far more extensive set of sources for this stream of history and reached a different and more extensive set of conclusions. And for that I get my knuckles rapped, again.

“She should not have written this book,” Horowitz wrote. My conclusions – my sources − are verboten in Radosh-Horowitz World.

Fortunately, not so in America.

PRAISE FOR WHAT IS CONVENTIONAL, CONDEMNATION FOR WHAT IS … NOT IN MY BOOK!

Radosh:

“Rees gives a nuanced account … but Rees does not share West’s conspiratorial mindset, or her claim that the suppression [of Soviet guilt for the Katyn Forest Massacre], which Churchill demanded, was the result of machinations by Soviet agents. In fact Rees reaches conclusions quite the opposite from West’s, something readers of West’s book would be unaware of.” (Emphasis added.)

How weird is this: First, I make no such claim regarding “Soviet agents” – or even, in this case, agents of influence, either. What I analyze in depth regarding Katyn is a case of moral decline and cowardice. Indeed, I am able to draw on Rees’s fine account in this same stretch regarding Katyn, and find his conclusions quite sound. In other words, Rees’ conclusions are not incompatible with what is, in fact, in my book. You might think as we approach the end that Radosh would ease up on the pace of calumnies and sloppinesses, but he could hardly be more wrong on more points than he is here. The critique is an utter shambles.

Meanwhile, I can find no evidence that Churchill did anything other than follow along in this ugly suppression, not “demand” it, as Radosh claims.

LIKE THE ENERGIZER BUNNY, HE KEEPS ON GOING

Radosh:

“Rees asks an important question that West might have paid attention to: Could Western leaders have `prevented the Soviet dominance of Eastern Europe by acting differently during their partnership with Stalin?’ ”

Is this some kind of horrible prank − ? I “might” have paid attention to this important question…? I have written an entire book paying attention to this question.

And then he gets it wrong, yet again:

“The decision not to consider an entente with Hitler’s army against Stalin was a clear-headed affirmation of U.S. interests, not a betrayal as West virtually screams.”

Not. In. My. Book.

Radosh quotes Rees to comment on the German Underground; Rees, who pronounces his own two-sentence encapsulation of the entire history of the German Underground as having presented a “disastrous course of action” that was best avoided. Thus, Radosh dismisses my entire 15,000 word chapter, which draws from multiple sources Rees did not draw from, rendering the comparison of our two narratives moot at best, and his own appraisal inapplicable to mine.

“This is the consensus of every historian of the war,” Radosh writes, once again pronouncing, denouncing my true crime – writing a non-consensus narrative that, Radosh and Horowitz clearly believe, must be stopped by any means necessary. This includes the willful and baseless attempt to destroy my own credibility and reputation to do so.

This includes the lies, distortions, fabrications and smears that I have endured and rebutted here.

But “the consensus of every historian”?

Whether or not Radosh is suddenly right about something, I can say with complete confidence: It is not the consensus of me.

Commentary from the Blogosphere

What follows is an unusual chronicle of controversy. It is by many authors from many places, from Los Angeles to Georgia, from Ken Sikorski at Tundra Tabloids to Ned May at Gates of Vienna, from Carol Taber at Family Security Matters to Ruth King at Ruthfully Yours and more, all of whom erupted in shock, perplexity, consternation, and outrage at the onslaught of vitriolic attacks leveled at both American Betrayal and me personally, beginning with Ronald Radosh’s 7,000-word “take-down” (his word) published at David Horowitz’s Frontage Magazine on August 7, 2013. (See Appendix 2 for a listing of the copycat pieces that followed.)

It fell to me to demonstrate the mendaciousness of these attacks, which was the task I set for myself in my 22,000-word-rebuttal. That document took weeks to prepare. How fortunate – how blessed  I was that in the interim so many individuals rose up in my defense.

Some of the authors of the following essays were known to me; others were not. All of them wrote their opinions spontaneously and unsolicited, which makes their contributions all the more precious. I was similarly heartened by the dozens if not scores of readers who fought in the “comment wars” that raged over American Betrayal at participating websites: Frontpage, PJ Media, The American Thinker, National Review and elsewhere. Meanwhile, I received many heartfelt emails of encouragement, some of which I have posted at the Reader’s Corner at my website.

I would like to note that this controversy, while quite personal and specific to me and my book, was also about something larger: the nature of civilized debate; the conduct of political discussion; the openness of historical inquiry. These weighty matters and the principles they entail spurred these writers to take their stands, and thank goodness. “The media,” including conservative media, failed to respond or even address any of these vital issues. When on September 4, in a brutal excess of “political correctness,” my Team B II colleague Clare M. Lopez was fired – fired -- by the Gatestone Institute for favorably mentioning my book in an essay, this same unbroken silence became a new danger to free expression and inquiry.

Then again, it may well be that the silence lingers because so many are unaware of what went on in the shank of the summer of ’13. All the more reason to draw attention to the voices of vigilance below. May they encourage new and freewheeling debate.

Diana West

October 2013

My Say: On the Matter of Diana West Vs. Frontpage

By Ruth King

Ruthfully Yours

August 8th, 2013

First: Diana West is my friend. I admire her, respect her and trust her research.

I read her book “American Betrayal” carefully. I came to her book with a serious difference with her over Senator Joseph McCarthy who was Senator while I was experiencing a political growing up at Bronx High School of Science where supporting the candidacy of General Eisenhower was heresy, to say nothing about the “sainthood and martyrdom” of the Rosenbergs.

Like George Orwell, McCarthy’s name altered the dictionary…and “McCarthyism” became synonymous with punishment and harassment of dissent…..I went along with this until I read “Witness” by Whittaker Chambers; until I realized that the Communist hunter James Jesus Angleton (a C.I.A. counterintelligence agent and one of the men who helped found the Mossad in 1951) was right about a Russian/Communist mole in the C.I.A. even though he was called a “crackpot conspiracist”; until the revelations that J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the Manhattan Project may have been a Soviet agent (the Alsop brothers hysterically compared the investigation of Oppenheimer to the Dreyfus affair); until I read Diana’s book. Maybe….just maybe…Joseph McCarthy, not the most attractive or likeable messenger was on to something really big. “American Betrayal” is persuasive, informative, meticulously researched and documented and convincing.

Now, many may disagree. David “Spengler” Goldman, a friend whom I like and respect agrees with Ron Radosh. So does a dear friend of mine who has courageously exposed the radical agenda of the climateers and so called environmentalists, so does Jamie Glazov, another person whom I like and respect, so do many others, and Frontpage had every right to publish Radosh’s nasty review.

But, and this is the serious butt of the scandal…Frontpage should not have removed Mark Tapson’s good review and then as a conciliatory crumb offered Diana the chance to rebut Radosh. I don’t blame her for refusing and all the squirming and offensive name calling and apologetics at the site don’t excuse their craven decision to remove Mark Tapson’s review which they had accepted and posted.

In good time and in a venue of her choosing Diana west will reply, I can’t wait to read and post it.

# # #

David Horowitz and Ron Radosh Attack Diana West and American Betrayal

By Donald Douglas

American Power Blog

August 9, 2013

Folks will remember I attended the Diana West book signing last month. It was a lively event and I was excited to meet Diana.

At the time I'd read a couple of chapters of the book. I'm frankly not well read in the historiography of Communist Party infiltration of the U.S. government, although from my own training I thought that some of Diana's conclusions were quite broad, especially on WWII strategic issues and the origins of the Cold War in Europe. Indeed, I mentioned to Diana that I thought her book was very "bold" and that I'd be interested to see the reactions among academic historians.

Unfortunately, this isn't what I had in mind.

It turns out that former Communists-turned conservatives David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh have launched a vicious, personal and ad hominem attack on Diana and American Betrayal. And right off the bat I have to say that any writer/scholar is going to face criticism and pushback against their work. But in an ideal world such criticism comes with an abundance of collegiality, reflecting normative expectations of elevating the community of scholars and scholarship. But with Horowitz and Radosh the attack is actually the exact opposite. It's an attempt to destroy any scholarship that isn't the acceptable form of anti-communism. This is conservative political correctness of the most extremely ugly kind.

Lots of interested parties are weighing in on this, and the heated exchange has seen a flurry of salvos issued at FrontPage Magazine, PJ Media, with Diana responding at her blog. But to be clear, at this point it's not whether Diana's book is right or wrong on facts and interpretations. It's that she's being treated as shabbily as can be, and sadly this is by people I've long held in very high esteem.

Let's start with Diana's initial, shocking email exchange with the folks at FrontPage. See, "If Frontpage Will Lie about This, What Won't They Lie About?" Diana was responding to Radosh's attack on her book at Horowitz's website, which included a nasty disclaimer falsely alleging that Diana refused to publish a response to Radosh at FrontPage. Check that link for the full post. (And note that Horowitz pulled his website's initial glowing review of the book, written by Mark Tapson, "MARK TAPSON ON DIANA WEST’S “AMERICAN BETRAYAL”.") But here's the exchange:

The email sequence starts at the bottom. I note that Horowitz cc'd his email (immediately below) to three other people  presumably to display his cleverness.

On Aug 7, 2013, at 1:08 AM, david horowitz wrote:

Dear Diana,

Our decision to remove the review of American Betrayal was not because it offered an incorrect opinion that we wanted to suppress. The review was removed because the reviewer was as incompetent to provide an informed assessment of your book as you were to write it.

David [Horowitz]

From: jamie glazov

Subject: Fwd: review of your book

Date: August 6, 2013 7:41:00 PM PDT

To: David Horowitz

I guess we're not friends anymore.

From: Diana West ...

Date: Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 9:38 PM

Subject: Re: review of your book

To: jamie glazov

Dear Jamie,

What gall. You and your crew behave like little totalitarians, suppress an "incorrect" opinion of my book, and, now that you have your "correct" review at the ready, ask me to dignify your nasty tactics by engaging in civil debate. If I deem it worth my while to respond to the Radosh review, I will find another outlet.

Diana

On Aug 6, 2013, at 9:41 PM, jamie glazov wrote:

Dear Diana, I just want to give you a heads up that our review of your book, written by Ron Radosh, will be going up on our site at 9:30pm Pacific time this evening (12:30am Eastern).

David would like me to pass on to you that you are most welcome to write a response to this review, and to feel free to write at length to defend your position (but not longer than the review itself).

Sincerely, Jamie.

I've placed Horowitz's email in bold as the condescension and contempt for Diana is really astonishing.

And the exact same contempt bleeds across the page at Radosh's angry review at FrontPage, "McCarthy on Steroids." He's so fired up that he posted another piece at PJ Media even before Diana was able to respond, "Why I Wrote a Take-Down of Diana West’s Awful Book."

And then on it goes. Here's David Horowitz, "Editorial: Our Controversy With Diana West."

There's also a review by historian Jeffrey Herf, "Diana West vs. History." And then Ron Radosh lashes out again, "Diana West’s Attempt to Respond."

And then back over at Diana's blog, "If Frontpage Lies about This, They'll Lie about Anything, Pt. 2," and "'Professor' Radosh Gets an 'F'."

Again, I'm still reading and evaluating Diana's book, and I expect to be reading more books in the genre of Soviet espionage against the U.S. My argument here is that the attacks on Diana are unscholarly and unprofessional. Nothing here works to elevate the community of scholars above the routine bilge we navigate on a daily basis in the blogosphere. There's a prodigious amount of research that went into American Betrayal, and I'd expect that the work would be seen as advancing an important debate and offering much needed provocation in our current era of official state-sponsored ignorance and the media's capitulation to daily Orwellian lies.

# # #

My Say: Why Do Ron Radosh and David Horowitz Hate Diana West?

By Ruth King

Ruthfully Yours

August 11th, 2013

Thank you for the myriad letters expressing support for Diana West and outrage at the actions of Frontpage. As you know, I have been partial to Frontpage and I post something from them almost every day. I have been pondering so many of your questions about the possible motivations of two journalists who promote a conservative agenda and expose mindless liberals and leftists, but have been obsessively attacking one author and one book. They have caused the controversy by purging a good review and posting a vicious one. When brought to task, they redoubled their attacks and insults.

Diana West, the author, has stripped the calumnies about Joseph McCarthy, a bogeyman to both leftists and conservatives, to reveal that he, along with other Senate and House investigators of both parties were certainly onto something real in disclosing the penetration of high ranking Soviet Agents and propagandists in all the corridors of power and policy- the government, the media, entertainment and the academies. Some of you have asked if that could explain their animus. I don’t thinks so.

Diana West will rebut every smear and lie and misstatement but in the meantime, here is some perspective on how Marxism infected America long after World War 2 and long after Joseph McCarthy.

The work of spies and agents of influence for the Soviet Union was aided by the “useful idiots” who did the leg work in the public. Some were amateur hour socialists, others like Horowitz and Radosh were, by their own admission, Marxists who carried their useful idiocy into the anti Vietnam War movement. And, they remained Marxists in spite of the revelations of the murderous acts and intentions of Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh and Castro. They remained Marxists even when Robert Conquest, the brilliant historian, poet and essayist published The Great Terror – in 1968 detailing Stalin’s purges and brutality. Harrison Salisbury called it “brilliant…not only an odyssey of madness, tragedy, and sadism, but a work of scholarship and literary craftsmanship.” Gee….Radosh who described himself as “ a young man of vast intellectual curiosity” must have missed it.

Yes, while Jamie Glazov’s (Jamie Glazov whom I like is an editor at Frontpage) late and noble father, a Russian dissident was being harassed and threatened in Russia, Ron Radosh remained a member of the Communist party and was cavorting with Students for a Democratic Society and assorted thugs and terrorists. And, David Horowitz, who was editor of Ramparts magazine, by his own admission was eager “to divulge the secrets of America’s electronic intelligence agency to the world. We viewed it as an effort to level the military playing field so that America would no longer be the superpower that was able to lord it over everyone else.” His words…not mine.

Diana West reminds Horowitz and Radosh how they abetted and supported a vile and genocidal ideology, far more pernicious and treasonous than the punk leftists such as Oliver Stone or Code Pink or their ilk, so often attacked in Frontpage.

While Radosh and Horowitz both have denounced Communism and the left, do they accept their inherent responsibility for the present climate which they attack daily in Frontpage?

In fact, at the end of his book Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left by Ronald Radosh (Jun 15, 2002), the author states:

“”The country is stronger for having encountered and withstood us.” Huh?

No! The country is not stronger for having encountered your arrogance and recklessness, and Diana West demonstrates how the deception and self-deception of Marxists, paved the way for the political correctness, moral relativism, and blindness to the dangers of Islam that now pervade our culture.

That surely must rankle.

# # #

FrontPage's Spitballs Strike Diana West

By Edward Cline

Family Security Matters

August 12, 2013

There is a firestorm occurring on FrontPage over a purported review of Diana West's American Betrayal: The Assault on Our Nation's Character, written by Ronald Radosh. Radosh penned a "review" which questioned the reasoning and scholarship of West's contention that Franklin D. Roosevelt consciously, or by subtle policy, boosted the fortunes of Stalin's Soviet régime to profit from the course of WWII, aided in large part by Soviet agents working within and without the U.S. government, and by Harry Hopkins, FDR's chief advisor and aide for so many years.

The title of Radosh's review telegraphs his hostility towards West and her book, "McCarthy on Steroids," and what he plans to say about the book. It is interesting to note that some time has passed since the first reviews of West's book appeared, one on FrontPage itself, written by Mark Tapson in July, whom Radosh does not consider an authority on the subject of Soviet espionage and FDR's complicity in furthering the interests of Stalin and the Soviet Union.

Significantly, FrontPage's editors purged, or removed, Tapson's objective, short, and informative review of the West book. It's too late for that, because, speaking for myself, I already have a hard copy of the review, together with its now defunct URL. The text of it can be found here, on West's own blog site. Printed out, it comes to two and a fraction pages. How many reader comments it generated is now unknown.

Printed out, Radosh's comes to nearly ten pages. Radosh may as well have written a book. It has generated, to date, 182 reader comments, a good many of them criticizing Radosh for conducting a smear campaign against West or otherwise advising him that he is talking through his former "Red Diaper Baby" hat. Radosh continually accuses West of weaving a "conspiracy theory," when she painstakingly documents every claim, assertion, and conclusion in American Betrayal.

Why would the editors remove Tapson's review? Because it contradicts Radosh's in substance and in style, in truth, and in honesty. The removal of Tapson's review speaks volumes about the motives of FrontPage's editors. Instead of issuing a statement to the effect that while they respect Tapson's views on West's book, there is another perspective and here is Mr. Radosh's, and even providing readers to a link to Tapson's review. But to remove a contradictory and controversial article is a confession of intellectual weakness and moral turpitude. The editors do not wish readers to compare the Tapson review with Radosh's. They wish to play Big Brotherish Ministry of Truth games with readers' minds.

In his rambling, Alinskyite article, Radosh expects West to have read or consulted every book ever published whose subject was FDR's conscious, insouciant, or unwitting complicity in the preservation of the Soviet Union. He claims she didn't read this or that authority or author. Her knowledge and command of the field of Soviet-American studies ought to have been encyclopedic, and if it wasn't, then, as far as Radosh and his editors are concerned, she should be shot down, discredited, and her work consigned to a dustbin.

Reading his purported review, I was constantly reminded of that old legal saw, "When did you stop beating your wife?" "But I never beat my wife." "Prove it." "I can't prove a negative." "Too bad. Let the implied charge be entered into the minds of the jury." "Objection!" "Objection overruled."

Reading Radosh's "review," one is first knocked silly by the highly personal animus he nurtures for West. It colors his purported review and does him no favors, and certainly, as West herself points out, does nothing to lend his reputation as a neocon any credibility. I could not shake loose the impression that Radosh was attempting to defend Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, and even Stalin from West's charges. The invective present in his long screed is demonstrable and there for all to see who choose to see.

But rather than attempt to counter Radosh's allegations of West's incompetency and illiteracy - which in itself would require a book-length treatment, something I am not willing to undertake because the soundness and value West's book speak for themselves - I will simply stress that FrontPage's editors have shown their dishonest and manipulative hands by removing Mark Tapson's review. That is an unconscionable and unforgivable journalistic and moral crime.

That is a grave enough charge that should weigh heavily on FrontPage's editors. Radosh's purported review may as well have appeared in The New York Times, and we all know how committed that publication is to straight journalism and truth-telling.

But, then, we are dealing with Neocons here. Neoconservativism is simply a smorgasbord of supposedly "right-wing" ideologies populated largely by former communists, retired radical left-wing activists, cringing liberals, and even ex-SDS members such as Radosh. It is as philosophically rudderless as traditional as "right-wing" Republican philosophy (provided anyone can find it). As a movement, it is so open-ended it may as well admit Barack Obama and all three Clintons as honorary members. Neoconservatism can accommodate just about every ideology but Islam.

Had West written a similar book about the infiltration of our government, military, and other institutions by Islamic supremacists, would Radosh have attempted to pick it apart and wisecrack about West's insufficient scholarly abilities? I'm betting he would. Would the editors of FrontPage have sanctioned it? To judge by their behavior now, I'm betting they would.

They've shot their bolt, discredited themselves, and I'll never trust a neocon ever again. Not that I ever did.

I have also reviewed West's book on Rule of Reason and Family Security Matters, "The Enemy Inside the Gates," here and here. Judge for yourselves. I have also critiqued another scurrilous review of West's book by Frank Csongo in The Washington Times, "Critical Tunnel Vision at The Washington Times" (June 27th), here.

I conclude this defense of Diana West and her book by paraphrasing myself from "The Enemy Inside the Gates":

On one hand, the culprits did not value the truth. On the other, they feared its power and went to extraordinary lengths to suppress it, erected ideological barricades to block it from public knowledge, and punished those who spoke the truth or threatened to tell the truth.

West's lesson to Americans: Reality can't be redacted, buried, fabricated, falsified, or omitted.

And that goes for the editors of FrontPage, as well.

# # #

Ruth King Examines David Horowitz’s and Ron Radosh’s Attack on Diana West’s Reputation

By John L. Work

Here’s the Right Side of It

August 12, 2013

I’m awaiting the arrival of my copy of Diana West’s new Book American Betrayal: The Secret Assault On Our Nation’s Character.  I’ve not commented on the work itself because I have yet to read it. I have, however, followed Diana’s literary work for years. I read and reviewed her first book, The Death of the Grownup: How America’s Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization.

As a retired law enforcement officer of twenty-plus years experience, followed by nearly two years as an investigator with the Colorado State Public Defender’s Office, detailed criminal investigations accounted for ten years of my career in the field. I investigated crimes for lawyers working on both sides of American courtrooms, including murders, sexual assaults, robberies, burglaries and white collar crimes.

From the first column I encountered by chance many years ago, shortly after the 9/11/01 attacks, I found Diana West to be meticulous and accurate in her fact-gathering methods. She would have been a marvelous detective. She is ethical and microscopically true to the smallest details in her presentation of evidence.

Come now neo-conservatives David Horowitz of www.FrontPageMag.com and Ronald Radosh, both former revolutionary communists. Their anti-American activities in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s were dedicated to the implementation of Karl Marx’s manifesto. Their support for that ideology endorsed Nikita Khruschev’s continuation of Josef Stalin’s gulags in the USSR. They provided de facto abetment for a regime responsible for the suffering and deaths of countless victims of Communist repression.

So, Horowitz and Radosh recanted their revolutionary ideas and recited their mea culpa. They switched sides. They made their fortunes writing books for patriotic American conservative interests. I’m not impressed with their sincerity, especially in light of the recent events. The two former Marxists, hiding behind their neo-con credentials, have launched a relentless attack on Diana West’s book in a manner that can only be seen as carefully designed to ridicule, marginalize and destroy her literary credentials. This is not scholarly debate. It’s annihilation and character assassination. Why would they do this?

Over at www.RuthfullyYours.com, Ruth King presents her hypothesis on why Horowitz and Radosh decided to start this malicious campaign, which to all appearances is designed to demolish West’s reputation as a scholar and author. I recommend that you take the time to read Ruth’s opinion and make your decision:

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2013/08/11/my-say-why-do-ron-radosh-and-david-horowitz-hate-diana-west/

As soon as I’ve read American Betrayal, I’ll render my opinion on its value.

# # #

What Are They Thinking at American Thinker?

By Ruth King

Ruthfully Yours

August 13th, 2013

I like and often post from American Thinker…but these past few days have set me to thinking…They have joined the jeremiad against Diana West. Two efforts are actually risible - by authors who have not read the book!!!!

Exhibit A:

CLARICE FELDMAN WEIGHS IN ON DIANA WEST WITHOUT HAVING READ THE BOOK!!!! SEE NOTE PLEASE

All Feldman does is repeat the screeds of Radosh and Herf…..hhmmmmm……

“This week I’m making an exception in highlighting the imbroglio between Ron Radosh, an historian whose knowledge of the American Communist party and the McCarthy era is unmatched, and Diana West, author of American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on our Nation’s Character. I’m doing so, not to attack West whose work I have not read, but to point out the dangers of demagogic writers — everywhere on the political spectrum and the emotional bonds their fans form with them. ”

ANOTHER “REVIEW” OF DIANA WEST BY RON CAPSHAW – SOMEONE WHO HAS NOT READ THE BOOK !!!!

“I haven’t read West (I do intend to), but from the scuttlebutt and reviews circulating the internet, it is fairly apparent that she is a reckless historian of the McCarthy school of history. This, Ron Radosh is not. Unlike the conspiratorial school, populated on the left by Oliver Stone, and on the right by West, Radosh dares to take a complex view of history. He is grown up enough to realize that both Hiss was guilty and McCarthy was a reckless demagogue; that the blacklist was wrong and that the Hollywood Ten were selective civil libertarians.”

More egregious, however is the following by raging Ron Radosh where it is obvious that he got an advance copy of Diana West’s submitted rebuttal. That’s really unsavory.

RON RADOSH: HISTORY AS IDEOLOGY…..ANOTHER OBSESSIVE ATTACK ON DIANA WEST…..SEE NOTE PLEASE

Diana West submitted a rebuttal of false claims against her by Radosh to American Thinker, but instead of publishing them, AT ran this by Ron Radosh, which shows in his words that he saw her column:

“Now let me turn to some of Diana West’s key assertions regarding World War II, which she argues in the new piece she is writing for this site I do not really effectively challenge.”

And by the way…..AT has not posted West’s rebuttal……rsk

# # #

Yet Another Circular Firing Squad

By Ned May

Gates of Vienna

August 13, 2013

The controversy over Diana West’s book American Betrayal continues at a rolling boil within certain sectors of the conservative ghetto on the Internet.

Before laying out the latest details, I’d like to consider the larger principle at stake here. The issue is not what is written in Ms. West’s book, nor does it concern who is right or wrong among those who have weighed in on the book.

The most important — and puzzling — aspect of this episode is the eagerness of people to stake out a public position about American Betrayal without having read the book. It is nothing short of astonishing that respected writers and scholars should be willing to state a definitive opinion about a book they haven’t read. How is it that so many well-educated people could be so lacking in intellectual integrity?

So, when I post about the current imbroglio, I must emphasize that I have no opinion about the book, since I have not read it. I do, however, have an opinion about people who state their firm opinions about a book they have not read.

The latest prominent venue to publish an article about American Betrayal was the New English Review, which posted excerpts from Ronald Radosh’s original review yesterday, accompanied by supportive remarks from NER’s editor-in-chief, Rebecca Bynum.

Reader comments accompanying all of the reviews and articles attacking Diana West have been overwhelmingly negative about her detractors, and the comments on Ms. Bynum’s post were no exception. One commenter had some especially thoughtful points to make in response, based largely on the article “FDR’s Traitor?” by Dr. Andrew Bostom that was posted yesterday at American Thinker:

Rebecca, you owe it to yourself and your readers to read the book — don’t let Radosh et al tell you what to think. It’s now deeply discounted at amazon.com.

Note what Geert Wilders reportedly took for some light reading on summer vacation.

The NER has a stellar reputation for integrity. Why not read the book and then do your own review on it?

Here’s a review by an expert on the subject, Bernie Reeves at AT. Worth your time. Bernie Reeves, a magazine editor and publisher, is founder of the Raleigh Spy Conference, established in 2003 to interpret declassified information from the 1930s through the Cold War.

Don’t miss the author Diana West’s many ripostes to Radosh here.

Please also note the sad problem of Radosh’s factual errors (including his mistakes in correcting a first set of errors). He gets the book wrong (I mean he literally mixes the book up with another book apparently). At 75 there can be — not always, but we’ve all seen it in relatives or friends or colleagues — a decline in cognitive functioning, and Radosh’s rage and paranoia about Diana West and American Betrayal fits that profile as well. See here (“Today, what I consider one of the most important review articles I have written is available on Frontpagemag.com. It is about Diana West’s horrendous and yet popular book, American Betrayal, which to my mind is not only the single worst book I have ever read, but a “conservative” assault on history, the truth and intellectual integrity.”)

Seriously, Rebecca, how can you NOT read a book that is “the single worst book” that Radosh ever read, especially since he spent decades reading communist tracts before he become a recovering former communist? Aren’t you even a wee bit curious? That’s some bad book.

One last thing — the whole Source 19 controversy. Since you haven’t yet read the book — but you will, right? — this may be a bit obscure, but bear with me. It’s not the centerpiece of West’s argument, but it’s the centerpiece of Radosh’s argument against West. She says Edouard Mark identified in 1998 that source 19 was Harry Hopkins. Radosh grants her this point, but then notes that in 2009, Mark presented a paper (In Re Alger Hiss — A Final Verdict from the Archives of the KGB) in which (and this is my research, not what Radosh says which is much briefer), on page 33, Mark quoted Vassiliev’s notes referring to Boris Bazarov’s letter in 1936 mentioning a “19” which was annotated much later by John Haynes as referring to Laurence Duggan, not Harry Hopkins. (Why yes, it is like a passage from Nabokov passed through a processor designed by Borges, but hang in there). So Radosh’s annotation by John Haynes in the Mark paper from 2009 was more recent than West’s 1998 Edouard Mark reference — so the point goes to Radosh. But it turns out that Herbert Romerstein, a leading historian of the era (author of “The Venona Secrets”), in November 2012 published with Stan Evans “Stalin’s Secret Agents.” See pages 113-199 for a lengthy discussion of the “19” question — from 1943 — in which the authors citing numerous sources conclude that “19” was Harry Hopkins. Who knows, maybe they recycled numbers. Maybe it’s an open question still. Serious and cognitively capable people can take different positions and keep analyzing the evidence and agree to disagree. Sadly, not Radosh.

So at least — if these were fact-based discussions by Radosh et al, in the same way that American Betrayal is a well-sourced, fact-based work (900+ footnotes) — at least that 2012 discussion of “19” would be a point to Diana West in this match, no?

At least it could have been an interesting debate, and civil? And not this awful leftwing tradition of denunciation and disinformation to which Radosh reverts.

Give it a shot. Read the book. I would be very interested in reading one of your thoughtful essays, especially after all the facts have emerged through Diana’s posts.

Look for some good writing on this coming soon from Europe too.

Ms. Bynum responded to this comment, and others:

Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. It still appears to me that West has charged into US history in a way that is very reckless. I know enough about that period to state unequivocally that NER Press would never have published a book like that. If I were to review it, my review would be similar to Radosh’s, but without his clear expertise on the Cold War. I’m more familiar with the war years and FDR.

I wish Diana luck, but I cannot agree with her about Hopkins, FDR or what should have been in the aftermath of the war.

A reader who followed the exchange was amazed by what he read at the New English Review, and emailed us with his observations:

Without reading the book, and as a book publisher herself — how can she make any of these comments? She knows in advance that her review would be similar to Radosh’s without having read the book? Isn’t this the very picture of an imposed politically correct party line? That she is saying, publicly, she will have no thoughts other than Radosh’s, but that his are by definition superior to hers?

Confronted with sins small and large, it is always a temptation to despair. And yet Diana is winning with the commenters — readers both ordinary and expert in the field — and their comments have been courageous, truth-seeking, brimming with good fellowship. Even better, so many keep telling her to keep her chin up, etc.

What an extraordinary stage this has set for so many to engage with morality, ethics, personal integrity, their own place in history.

How affirming this is for the power of the written word.

The near-universal condemnation of Diana West’s conclusions by prominent conservative writers stands in stark contrast with the sentiment of commenters on these writers’ sites, which are overwhelmingly in favor of Ms. West’s position and against the lockstep — and often personal — attacks on her.

It’s too early to make a judgment about what lies behind this deep divide, or why so many well-educated people are so hasty in their condemnation of a book they acknowledge not having read.

I don’t understand it. It’s peculiar, perplexing, and dismaying. It represents a widespread abandonment of academic standards among scholarly critics who should know better.

It makes no sense.

# # #

My Say: All is Quiet on the Diana Western Front

By Ruth King

Ruthfully Yours

August 14, 2013

First: The good news is that sales of her book are soaring.

Second: Frontpage today has some good columns and a very apposite title “Rats Are Still Comrades.” Yup….they sure are.

Third: On Pajamas Media Raging Ron Radosh has a piece on treason, Manning, the Rosenbergs etc.

He has this pithy comment:

“If we excused people who betray their country out of a delusional belief that they are doing so for a higher cause than patriotism to their own nation, then our nation would truly be in mortal danger from our enemies.”

And in an interview about his book (The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America) in 2006) Horowitz had this to say:

He noted that he writes in the introduction to the book that he believes all professors — liberal and conservative — have points of view and are entitled to interpret their fields according to their philosophies. Such expression, he writes, “is the essence of academic freedom.” In the interview, Horowitz said that a McCarthyite would never make such a statement, and he said that the only McCarthyism in evidence with regard to his book are those who criticize it with “a rash of misrepresentations” and without having read it.

# # #

Lars Hedegaard on ‘American Betrayal’ by Diana West: ‘Her book is among the most well-documented I have ever read.’

By Andrew Bostom

Andrewbostom.org

August 14, 2013

Historian and journalist Lars Hedegaard, who has—wait for it—actually read Diana West’s “American Betrayal,” made these very insightful comments on the book:

What Diana West has done is to dynamite her way through several miles of bedrock. On the other side of the tunnel there is a vista of a new past. Of course folks are baffled. Few people have the capacity to take this in. Her book is among the most well documented I have ever read. It is written in an unusual style viewed from the perspective of the historian—but it probably couldn’t have been done any other way.

Hedegaard, a former Marxist who left the movement just over thirty years ago, was one of the editors of the Fundamental historie series of books–world history from a Marxist perspective, in 4 volumes. He also edited a volume of the Hvem Hvad Hvor (“Who What Where”) yearbook in the 1980s. At present, he edits the online and print editions of the newspaper Dispatch International.

Lars Hedegaard’s major writings of late, which have focused on Islam, include the following books and articles:

Books

I krigens hus: Islams kolonisering af Vesten [In the House of War: Islam’s colonization of the West] (with Helle Merete Brix and Torben Hansen). Aarhus, Hovedland, 2003

1400 års krigen: Islams strategi, EU og frihedens endeligt [The 1400 Year War: Islam's strategy, the EU and the demise of freedom] (with Mogens Camre). Odense, Trykkefrihedsselskabets Bibliotek, 2009

Muhammeds piger: Vold, mord og voldtægter i Islams Hus. [Muhammad’s girls: Violence, murder and rape in the House of Islam] Odense, Trykkefrihedsselskabets Bibliotek, 2011

Articles

“Den 11. september som historie” [September 11 as history] in Helle Merete Brix and Torben Hansen (eds.), Islam i Vesten: På Koranens vej? Copenhagen, Tiderne Skifter, 2002.

“The Growth of Islam in Denmark and the Future of Secularism” in Kurt Almqvist (ed.), The Secular State and Islam in Europe. Stockholm, Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, 2007

“Free Speech: Its Benefits and Limitations” in Süheyla Kirca and LuEtt Hanson (eds.), Freedom and Prejudice: Approaches to Media and Culture. Istanbul, Bahcesehir University Press, 2008

“De cartoon-jihad en de opkomst van parallelle samenlevingen” [The cartoon jihad and the emergence of parallel societies] in Hans Jansen and Bert Snel (eds.), Eindstrijd: De finale clash tussen het liberale Westen en een traditionele islam. Amsterdam, Uitgiverij Van Praag, 2009

# # #

Cordon Sanitaire: FAIL

By Ned May

Gates of Vienna

August 14, 2013

On Sunday and yesterday we reported on the uproar in conservative circles about Diana West’s book American Betrayal, which examines the penetration of the United States government, in particular the Roosevelt administration, by Soviet agents of influence. One might assume from the discussion in those posts that Ms. West’s book was universally panned and condemned by American conservatives.

Such is not the case. Several readers have emailed us to point out those conservatives who have decided to breach the cordon sanitaire around American Betrayal. The cordon is pretty leaky, actually.

American Betrayal has received endorsements from:

Ÿ  Amity Shlaes

Ÿ  M. Stanton Evans

Ÿ  Monica Crowley

Ÿ  Debra Burlingame

Ÿ  Brad Thor

Ÿ  Laura Ingraham (who also made it a “must-read”)

It was also featured at the Heritage Foundation and the Daily Caller.

And Breitbart ran a five-part series based on book:

1. Why FDR Fail to Relieve MacArthur and 151,000 Troops Fighting the Japanese in the Philippines?

2. Did the Roosevelt Administration Send Uranium and Other Atomic Materials to Stalin?

3. Did Communist Influence Prolong WWII by Blocking German Resistance Efforts?

4. Did Communist Influence Lead to D-Day Invasion over Italy Strategy?

5. Did Uncle Sam Leave 15,000 to 20,000 GIs in Stalin’s Hands?

So, to mix my metaphors a bit, the choir is not singing in unison: there are reviewers who gladly recommend American Betrayal. One presumes that — unlike many other reviewers — they have actually read it.

# # #

An Unambiguous Example of Harry Hopkins’s Pro-Soviet Perfidy

By Andrew Bostom

Family Security Matters

August 15, 2013

Diana West’s American Betrayal enumerates an impressive litany of FDR “co-President” Harry Hopkins’s pro-Soviet activities. Here is a partial listing: his excessive largesse toward the USSR via Lend-Lease, which he oversaw, even to the point, arguably, of sacrificing American and British military needs; his relentless dedication to Stalin’s “Second Front” demands, opposing at least equally viable military alternatives less “advantageous” to Soviet expansionist designs in Eastern Europe, as originally laid out in the secret August, 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between the USSR and Nazi Germany; his dismissal of the 1940 Soviet Katyn massacres of 22,000 Polish civilians, soldiers, and officers; his labeling of Soviet defector to the U.S., Victor Kravchenko (author of the memoir, “I Chose Freedom”), a “deserter,” while pressing FDR to deport Kravchenko back to the USSR, where he faced certain execution; and, according to one very credible American witness, his apparent role in the facilitation of uranium shipments to the Soviets-after such shipments were embargoed.

This incomplete litany far transcends the controversy over whether Hopkins was Soviet “agent 19″-a case made, separately, by intelligence historians Eduard Mark, and Herbert Romerstein, but contended by the intelligence historian team of Haynes and Klehr.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence West presents of Hopkins’ traitorous perfidy is conveyed by reproducing a personal and confidential letter FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote to Hopkins and FDR (dated May 7, 1943), and chronicling what followed via revelations from a KGB archive. But what is of equal importance, in terms of West’s discussions of the glaring omissions in our historical understanding is a striking example of how established academics-in this instance, Christopher Andrew, insert their own a priori judgments in attempting to exculpate Hopkins of having consciously abetted Soviet anti-US espionage. More remarkable is Andrew’s omission of objective evidence-the direct contents of Hoover’s letter to Hopkins-making explicit what Hopkins had been told about Soviet “embassy member” Zarubin/Zubilin, i.e., that he was a Comintern agent.

What follows is Diana West’s own full elucidation of this telling episode, which elaborates on its summary portrayal by Christopher Andrew, from pp. 187-190 of American Betrayal:

We know this also from another Soviet source, the Mitrokhin archive, which tells us that “earlier in the year he [Hopkins] had privately warned the Soviet embassy in Washington that the FBI had bugged a secret meeting at which Zarubin (apparently identified by Hopkins only as a member of the embassy) had passed money to Steve Nelson, a leading member of the U.S. Communist underground.” (Andrew and Mitrokhin, Sword and Shield, 111.)

Let’s leave aside the unsubstantiated parenthetical comment preemptively declaring Hopkins “apparently” guileless: We have just learned that Hopkins blew an ongoing FBI surveillance operation by revealing to the Soviet embassy that a Soviet official had been bugged delivering money to the American Communist underground. Never mind that this Soviet chain of activity was in flagrant violation of the 1933 terms of U.S. diplomatic recognition prohibiting espionage activities in this country. The footnote to the statement cites Mitrokhin’s archive (vol. 6, ch. 12) and further notes, “Hopkins had been personally briefed by Hoover on Zarubin’s visit to Nelson. Hoover would doubtless have been outraged had he known that Hopkins had informed the Soviet embassy.” (Andrew and Mitrokhin, Sword and Shield, 594.)

With good cause. Hoover’s briefing came in the form of a “personal and confidential” letter to Hopkins, which the authors cite from Benson and Warner’s book VENONA, where it is reproduced in full.(Benson and Warner (eds.), VENONA, 49-50.)

To unpack Andrew and Mitrokhin’s statement and really shake out the wrinkles, we need to know, first, that Vasily Zarubin, who used the cover name Vasily Zubilin (that’ll throw people off), was a Soviet Comintern agent, later identified as the top NKVD rezident in the United States. We need to know also that Hopkins knew that Zarubin was a Soviet Comintern agent, despite Andrew and Mitrokhin’s parenthetical testament to Hopkins’s “apparent” ignorance. We know Hopkins knew this because J. Edgar Hoover, in the very letter Andrew and Mitrokhin cite, told Hopkins so.(Benson and Warner (eds.), VENONA, 49-50.)

“Dear Harry,” Hoover wrote in a letter marked “personal and confidential,” stamped May 7, 1943-some weeks after George Racey Jordan claims to have gotten orders from Hopkins to expedite a uranium shipment to Moscow:

“Through a highly confidential and reliable source it has been determined that on April 10, 1943, a Russian who is an agent of the Communist International paid a sum of money to Steve Nelson, National Committeeman of the Communist Party, USA, at the latter’s home in Oakland, California. The money was reportedly paid to Nelson for the purpose of placing Communist Party members and Comintern agents in industries engaged in secret war production for the United States Government so that information could be obtained for transmittal to the Soviet Union. The Russian agent of the Communist International has been identified as Vassili Zubilin, Third Secretary of the Embassy of the USSR.”

Zarubin/Zubilin was the top Soviet intelligence officer in the United States, who, we would later find out, “supervised Soviet atomic espionage.” (Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, 216)

In fact, it was from this bugging of Nelson’s home in Oakland, California, that the FBI learned about both the existence of the supersecret Manhattan Project and the Soviet espionage operation targeting it for the very first time. (Romerstein and Breindel, Venona Secrets, 545-46.)

Hopkins‘s reaction to Hoover’s revelation may be the most damning piece of evidence of all in the case against Harry Hopkins. When we read what Hoover told Hopkins in his confidential letter-that a Comintern agent posing as a senior Soviet diplomat in Washington was passing money to the American Communist underground to establish Comintern networks within the U.S. war industry to steal military secrets-and see Hopkins immediately turn around and tell the Soviet Embassy, where that same “diplomat” was posted, that the FBI was onto them, we have to realize we are looking at a traitor acting with Soviet, not American, interests at heart. I don’t see any other plausible conclusion-and this traitor was the closest adviser of the president of the United States.

I must interject one additional detail that Romerstein and Breindel provide in their report on the Zarubin-Nelson link, as recorded by a young FBI agent named William Brannigan, who would go on to head the FBI’s Soviet Counter- intelligence Section. In the course of their conversation, Zarubin and Nelson also discussed the work of Gregory Kheifetz, NKVD San Francisco rezident, and his mistress, Louise Brantsen, a wealthy California Communist who hosted parties bringing agents together at her San Francisco home.

Kheifetz was the agent assigned by Moscow to raid UC Berkeley’s Radiation Laboratory, where work on the atomic bomb was being done. (Romerstein and Breindel, Venona Secrets, 255-57.) George Racey Jordan mentioned Kheifetz in his 1950 testimony on the shipment of atomic materials-the cadmium rods, heavy water, uranium, and other atomic pile ingredients that went through the Lend-Lease hub under his supervision in Great Falls, Montana. Discussing a young Soviet sergeant Jordan believed was, in fact, a KGB minder sent to Great Falls to watch over the Soviet Lend-Lease chief at the base, Colonel Kotikov, Jordan mentioned that this particular sergeant took a lot of “mysterious” trips for a junior NCO.

Where would he go? “When he would apply to go to San Francisco, he would go to see Gregory Kheifetz,” Jordan recalled. (Hearings 1950, Shipment of Atomic Material, 1163)

This detail may not connect another dot, but it does add a dot to enlarge the plane on which the Soviet conspiracy was taking place. As Kotikov was collecting the ingredients in his “Bomb Chemicals” folder, his minder was tripping off to San Francisco to see a senior NKVD officer overseeing atomic espionage in the United States. From Jordan we have testimony that Harry Hopkins telephoned to push uranium through Great Falls to Moscow in April 1943. From Mitrokhin’s KGB archive we know that Hopkins tipped off the Soviets to the FBI’s April 1943 surveillance of atomic espionage in San Francisco. From J. Edgar Hoover’s May 1943 letter we know that Hopkins knew, at the very least, that he was tipping off the Soviets to FBI surveillance of a known Soviet agent seeking U.S. military secrets. In light of what Hopkins did upon receiving the Hoover letter, I don’t see how Hopkins can conceivably be described as any- thing but a conscious and conscientious agent of the Soviet Union.

The Hoover letter goes on to note the existence of further evidence of coop- elation between the CPUSA and the Comintern in such penetration operations, to offer details on Nelson’s background, and to caution Hopkins about the confidential nature of the information “inasmuch as the investigation is continuing.” Summing up, Hoover wrote, “Because of the relationship demonstrated in this investigation between the Communist Party, USA, the Comminist International and the Soviet Government, I thought the President and you would be interested in these data.” (Benson and Warner (eds.), VENONA, 49-50.)

“The President and you.” It wasn’t just burbling magazine copy that promoted the Roosevelt-Hopkins co-presidency; it was for real. Sure enough, Hopkins was so very interested in Hoover’s data he couldn’t wait to tell . . . the Soviets. (Did he ever even tell Roosevelt? We don’t know. Somehow, I doubt it.) The net effect of Hopkins’s spilling the FBI’s beans to the Soviets, then, was to make the Soviets-the “Freshmen”-more discreet in the future, more mindful of FBI eyes and ears. Just think: We wouldn’t know about this act of treason if a retired KGB archivist named Mitrokhin hadn’t bothered to copy, hide, and successfully smuggle his archives out of the former Soviet Union in 1992. Hopkins’s guilt on this particularly damning count would have remained secret, probably forever.

# # #

On Reading the Book

By Ned May

Gates of Vienna

August 15, 2013

Yesterday I pointed out some of the people who have read Diana West’s book American Betrayal and recommended it to others — in contrast to the many folks who have condemned the book while admitting they haven’t read it.

Interestingly enough, except for the original scathing review by Ronald Radosh at Front Page Magazine, all the negative reviews I have seen are by people who have not read the book, whereas all the positive reviews I have seen are by people who have read it.

Funny about that.

Dr. Andrew Bostom reports that “Historian and journalist Lars Hedegaard, who has — wait for it — actually read Diana West’s American Betrayal, made these very insightful comments on the book”:

What Diana West has done is to dynamite her way through several miles of bedrock. On the other side of the tunnel there is a vista of a new past. Of course folks are baffled. Few people have the capacity to take this in. Her book is among the most well documented I have ever read. It is written in an unusual style viewed from the perspective of the historian—but it probably couldn’t have been done any other way.

A commenter at Gates of Vienna named QiPo has also read the book:

I devoured each and every word of “American Betrayal” during which I was compelled to put the book down so that I could catch my breath again and again! It is magnificent! For those who have read Chambers’ “Witness”, Posner’s “Why America Slept”, Pacepa’s “Disinformation”, Grimes and Vertefeuille’s “Circle of Treason”, or Evans and Romerstein’s “Stalin’s Secret Agents”, Ms. West’s book allows you to play connect the dots with world events in a way that clearly rips away the lies of the statist-progressives both in our past and for today. My years of intense historical studies since 9/11 were confirmed by her immaculate scholarship and well reasoned conclusions.

Paul Fein, another commenter at Gates of Vienna, is not only reading the book, but supplements his appreciation of it with his own observations based on decades of experience in military intelligence. He says, “My only serious complaint about Diana West’s book so far is that she is far too optimistic”:

I have only just started reading Diana West’s book so what I write now may not be exactly what I will think once I am finished. However, I am already finding the criticisms of book surprisingly (well, actually not surprising at all) off topic. The basics thesis of the book, as is made abundantly clear in the introduction, is about the corrupting influence of Soviet penetration of the major institutions of the West, in particular the government and other institutions of the United States. Her point is that at some point the penetration becomes so great that the policy makers must indulge in self-deception in order to avoid admitting their own failures to stop the corruption. Eventually, self-deception becomes so ingrained that the policy makers’ abilities to rationally or even moderately objectively look at the world are, in effect, short-circuited. She even uses the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes to make her point. It is not simply that no one dares to admit that the Emperor has no clothes. Rational thinking has degenerated to the point, that the policy makers in their minds really do not see the clothes. Diana West even says something I had been saying to nearly everyone I trained at work since at least the late 1980’s that in the real world the child who cries out “The Emperor is naked” is punished or at least given re-education. These arguments about whether this or that fact is 100% correct or slightly off or whatever misses the point of her argument. She only needs to prove that there was enough Soviet penetration to corrupt the system and especially the thinking of the players in the system. It is quite proper to correct any and all errors, great and small; but we should also not lose sight of the intent of the book.

I worked in military intelligence within the Department of Defense for nearly 33 years as a collector and as an analyst going all the way back to service in Vietnam (another war we lost for no good reason). I find reading this book difficult, not because I think it is a bad book; but because after reading even a few sentences, my mind strays to so many things that I experienced or learned that confirm her thesis and I become so angry that I put the book down and rage “at the gods,” sometimes for an hour or two. It was during one of these rages that I decided to write this comment and share with your readers a couple of incidents that might have some bearing on Diana West’s thesis. While some of this is may not be common knowledge, I can assure you that none of this will in anyway disclose classified information. These are just things that I have experienced or picked up in a career in which I took my oath of office to defend the Constitution against “all enemies foreign or domestic” very seriously.

I have not reached the point where West discusses the career of Harry Dexter White. White was not a member of the Communist Party, but he was a Soviet spy while he was either Assistant Secretary of the Treasury or Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. (I am writing this comment “off the top of my head”; and so where I am not certain of the details, I will try to avoid error by using wording that indicates that uncertainty.) Perhaps West mentions these two interesting events. First is the Morgenthau plan. Morgenthau was Treasury Secretary and is credited with the plan which proposed that Germany should be completely de-industrialized, i.e. reduced to an agricultural country, and divided into, I believe, 5 independent countries. While the plan carries Morgenthau’s name, it is not at all clear how and who originated the plan and how the plan was developed. What is clear, however, is that the one country that would gain most from a strategic viewpoint from this plan was the Soviet Union. For centuries, Russia had been held back from expanding her influence in East Central Europe by first the Austro-Hungarian Empire and then a united Germany. The defeat of Austria in WWI eliminated the traditional obstacle to Russian expansion. The Morgenthau Plan would have permanently eliminated Germany. As it was, the Morgenthau Plan would have undermined any anti-Hitler, anti-Nazi resistance movement since the very existence of the German state, as opposed to its mere defeat and occupation, was now at stake. I cannot state for certain that the Morgenthau plan was the brain-child of White, but he was positioned to influence its content. I also find it very interesting that such a strategic plan would originate from the Treasury Department, rather than State or Army.

The second incident can definitely be traced back to White. At the end of WWII the U.S. allocated a large sum of gold to be shipped to China to stabilize the currency there. The man in charge of overseeing the shipment — Harry Dexter White. Somehow, the gold was never shipped. Chinese currency had been inflated during the war, and prices skyrocketed. Chinese inflation rivaled that of the Weimar Republic. While one may argue (very weakly in my opinion) that the inflation did not benefit the Mao’s forces, there can be no doubt that it undermined Chiang Kai-Shek’s government. The inflation issue even came up in a Chinese history or government class I took in about 1990, when inflation was becoming a problem in China. The professor, hardly a right-winger, flat out stated that the Communist Chinese government was in 1990 terrified of a new inflation since they had come to power on the failure of the Republic’s money.

I read someplace that at one point in his career Alger Hiss turned down the offer to be the number 2 man at the State Department. Instead he took the job of Assistant Secretary for Administration (or whatever the exact title of the job was at the time). Why take the unglamorous job? How did Stalin come to power? His rivals had the glamorous jobs, the “powerful” jobs. Stalin was essentially only the top bureaucrat within the Communist Party. It took him about 10 years; but when he decided to move on his rivals, his people were in all the right places. Am I saying that Alger Hiss was putting Communists into all the right places in the State Department? He surely protected several Communists. That was bad of course, but let’s return to Diana West’s thesis. He was in position to promote people with the “right understanding” of the Soviet Union. People who understood that “Yes, they are Communist, but [fill in the blank].” People who are sophisticated. People who know how the world really works. You know the type. Lenin called them “useful idiots.” Spies can be purged. Bureaucrats are forever (or as close to forever as is possible on Earth). The useful idiocracy then develops an incestuous relationship with academia. This means that the effects of Alger Hiss are with us even now.

In the late 1970s or very early 1980s I took a class at the Defense Intelligence School (or it might have become the Defense Intelligence College at the time). The title of the class was Soviet Intelligence and Security Services. Even though the instructor has long since passed on, I will not mention his name because that might still be something sensitive even now. Let me just call him “Mr. Smith.” Mr. Smith had been very high in the counter-intelligence of America. In fact he had been very close to James Angleton, a legend in counter-intelligence. His was one of the most remarkable classes I have ever had. To say it was eye-opening would be the crudest of understatements. It was one of the few classes I have ever had (and I have spent years and years in the classroom on both sides of the desk) in which every session was like a semester in any other class.

On the first day of class he pointed something out about academia. It is that Diana West thesis again. He asked us how many schools offering a Ph.D. in Soviet Studies requires a course on the KGB. Answer at that time — zero, nada, null, zilch. How many schools offered a regularly scheduled course on the KGB as an elective? Not a course each semester or even each year. Just something regular enough so that a Ph.D. student could at least study the KGB in the classroom once before completing the degree. Answer at that time — zero, nada, null, zilch. Now in the late 70s most professors would have agreed that the Soviet Union was at least something like a police state. Yet even with a Ph.D. in Soviet Studies, these so-called experts in the Soviet Union had never even studied the police organization of the police state. I look back on my degrees in Political Science and International Relations, and I just shake my head at how utterly naive and uninformed the vast majority of my professors had been. They really did not understand what the Soviet Union was all about. One of the reasons I retired was that I was tired of working with all the “best and brightest” that were coming into my profession. There is no one quite so stupid as a high IQ, over-credentialed fool.

Another story from that class, if I may. Mr. Smith knew many people in world outside the intelligence profession, in particular many authors. Herbert Romerstein is (or perhaps now was) the author of many books on the Soviet threat, and he was with us for a couple of class sessions. One incident he discussed has always stayed with me. There may be some of your readers who remember the “Days of Rage” at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. One of the more notable accomplishments of those days was the trial of the Chicago Seven, radicals who were put on trial for their activities in Chicago. The trial was particularly notable (back to that old thesis thing again) because it was one of the turning points in American jurisprudence. The trial became a joke, lawlessness and subversion were trivialized. For those who remember the Days of Rage, have you ever wondered how that many “students” managed to get to Chicago? Who organized their lodging? Who organized their transportation? What about their meals? Who paid for all this? The answer—the Communist Party of the USA. Mr. Romerstein told us that he had a conversation with one of the Chicago Seven some years after the Convention. I don’t remember which one, let’s call him Chicago 3. In the conversation, Chicago 3 said (as best I can remember), “Boy, did we use the Communists!! They did all the work and paid for everything, and we got all the glory.” Romerstein replied, “No, Chicago 3, the Communists used you.” Useful idiots come in all shapes and sizes.

Final story from that class. One of the students during a session on the McCarthy era asked how many agents had actually infiltrated the American government. “Was it 100s, a thousand?” Mr. Smith’s reply, “Goodness no.” (Again, not actual quotations. Just trying to reproduce the meaning of the conversation.) “Well then, how many? 50?” “Not more than a couple dozen. Fifty would be a disaster.” Remember, this is a class in which every student has the clearances to discuss this topic at all but the most compartmented of levels. Certainly, we could have been given a general idea of the true level of penetration. Also, remember that Mr. Smith had been a counter-intelligence agent for many years and had reached the highest levels of the profession. I had the opportunity after the class to speak with Mr. Smith several times. I never got even a hint of an impression that he was less than totally honest in what he said. We now know that there were at least 500+ Soviet agents operating in the U.S. government, 10 times what Mr. Smith called a disaster. This is just what we know. The most successful agents are the ones we don’t even know exist.

Another historical bit of trivia. Roosevelt’s Vice-President 1941-1945 was Henry A. Wallace, often described as “liberal.” That’s putting it mildly. Of course, he was replaced by Truman for the 1944 election. What if Wallace had remained Roosevelt’s Vice-President in 1945? Sometime after WWII, Wallace admitted that he had planned to make Alger Hiss his Secretary of State and Harry Dexter White his Secretary of the Treasury. This is not to say that Wallace knew of Hiss’s and White’s Communist connections. Rather is it just another illustration of the West thesis. Like the Social Revolutionaries in Russia/Soviet Union at the end of WWI, Wallace could not conceive of a “threat from the left.” Yes, indeed, “useful idiots” come in all shapes and sizes.

Finally, here is an example of just plain moral corruption that infects the bureaucracy (actually all human institutions) when you allow the disease of expediency, lying, twisting the truth, etc. to fester. I attended an after-work party of some sort. I really do not remember the reason for the party. The only thing I remember about the party was a flag-rank officer (general/admiral) surrounded by a bunch of officer of lesser rank within his service. The lesser officers were trying to get some “face-time” while the flag-rank officer was passing on his wisdom. As a civilian I had no real interest in that particular bureaucratic game, but I wanted to watch the interaction. (No, I will not identify the officer even by service.) One of the pearls of wisdom he passed on was the following. “If I had a chance to the position of [flag-rank officer X who had one more star and a “more important” position than the speaker] or my present position, I would choose my present position. [Flag-rank officer X] gets to see the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs maybe once a week. I see the Chairman every day. Therefore, I am in a better position to protect the interests of [the service of the flag-rank officer passing on his wisdom].” I was livid. Not a mention about protecting the Constitution or the USA. His first interest was in his service. Perhaps even that is giving him too much credit. I think his first interest was getting another star. To get that star, he needed to protect the interests of his service. He got the star.

Even though I am now a retired, cynical elderly man, I still get furious at what I see. I could go on for pages and pages of anecdotes, but my point is that I sincerely doubt that I will find anything to fault Diana West’s thesis regarding the corrupting influence of Soviet activities in the USA. In fact, without having finished the book I believe she probably understates the problem. I feel like I am watching the death of a beloved relative. I know the inevitable result of the disease that is killing her. I have known of the disease for many years and have had time to prepare for her death. I even know pretty much when the death will occur. Nonetheless, as she takes her final breaths, the sense of loss is overwhelming. This is how I feel every day. There is not a day that passes that I do not have tears in my eyes as I see my country take its last breaths. Nearly every night I lie awake wondering what more I could have done that might have made a difference.

The reality is that nothing I could have done would have made any difference. Any more than I could have saved the beloved relative, could I have saved or even slowed the progression of the disease that has infected America and Europe. The disease had already metastasized by the end of WWII. Just one symptom of the metastasized disease—after fighting national SOCIALISM for 5 years, the Brits elect their own socialist government before the war was even over. I am sure the owner’s of the nationalized industries must of been wondering what kind of freedom they had been defending. 1984 is not a dark satire of the Soviet Union. It is a projection of British socialism, as most regular readers of this site already know. Another symptom of the disease — the U.S. had fewer servicemen on active duty in 1950 when the Korean War began, than when Pearl Harbor was bombed. So much for the hard-nosed realist Harry Truman’s understanding of the realities of the world. I could go on and on; but you get my point, I hope. My only serious complaint about Diana West’s book so far is that she is far too optimistic.

I have spent many hours reading many an interesting post and many an interesting comment on this website. I admire the persistence and energy of everyone who contributes to this site. The fight must be fought. The enemy must be resisted. Nonetheless, I think the game is already lost. I refer to G. K. Chesterton’s book, “The Man Who Was Thursday.” Thursday is the pseudonym of an artist who has joined the leadership committee of a radical anarchist organization. There are seven members of the committee, each having a pseudonym for a day of the week. Thursday has infiltrated the committee as a police spy. At one point he is pursued by another committee member, let’s say it was the member who was Friday. After Friday has caught up with Thursday, they soon realize that they are both police spies. Thursday says to Friday (again not an exact quote), “I will fight this anarchist evil unto the death even though I believe we will lose.” Friday replies, “I will fight this anarchist evil unto the death even though I KNOW we will lose.” A masterful summary of the position in which all the decent people of this world find themselves, even if they do not yet realize it. This is what gives me nightmares. This is why I fight back tears nearly everyday for my children and grandchildren and for all the children and grandchildren of even the most useless of “useful idiots.” If I cannot live in the United States as she should be, then there is no place on this Earth that I wish to live. (Not a suicide note. Just a statement of what is at stake, at least for me.)

# # #

My Say: Unprecedented Attacks on Diana West

By Ruth King

Ruthfully Yours

August 16th, 2013

Today, Horowitz vents that Diana’s book should never have been published and that he is falsely accused of being in a “circular firing squad”….Wrong again….in a circular firing squad the participants do take a chance on becoming dead. Horowitz and cohorts are taking no chances in their frontal assault against Diana West and her book “American Betrayal.”

He offers faint praise for West’s writing on Islam, but neglects to mention her very long list of columns detailing the harm that political correctness did when it infiltrated our military’s COIN doctrine with rules of engagement that spared the sensibilities of our enemies at the expense of the safety of our own fighting forces. Frontpage did have one column on this national disgrace: “US Army Colonel Reveals Failure of COIN and Barbarism of Afghans” in October 2012.

In 2006 a critique of his book “The Professors-the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America’- a book that I personally liked very much- stated “Quotes and facts from Horowitz about individual professors are incorrect and many quotes are “wildly out of context.” Furthermore the report stated : “In 52 of the descriptions of professors Horowitz critiques, he does not cite a single classroom event or statement — despite his statement that his concern about professors is over what they do and say in the classroom.” Also: “Horowitz does not cite a single example of a student having his or her grade changed because of political views — despite his repeated statements that the “Academic Bill of Rights” is needed to prevent such grade punishment. ”

To all these critics Horowitz responded:

“He noted that he writes in the introduction to the book that he believes all professors — liberal and conservative — have points of view and are entitled to interpret their fields according to their philosophies. Such expression, he writes, “is the essence of academic freedom.” In the interview, Horowitz said that a McCarthyite would never make such a statement, and he said that the only McCarthyism in evidence with regard to his book are those who criticize it with “a rash of misrepresentations” and without having read it.

He was right then….why is he so wrongheaded now?

# # #

Conrad Black Now Joins the Hyena Pack

By Ruth King

Ruthfully Yours

August 16th, 2013

Today, Conrad Black, author of a hagiography of President Roosevelt, had a tantrum about Diana West. To say it was a tad intemperate is to sell a snarling pit bull short.

Without proving a single one of the claims of Ron Radosh, he huffed the following insults: “Diana West, a right-wing loopy who has occasionally aroused cautious hopefulness that she has been house-trained, has published a novel presented as a non-fiction work, entitled “America Betrayed,” which holds that the United States under Roosevelt and Truman was “an occupied country” governed by robotic agents and stooges of Josef Stalin.”

He adds that she is (in the company of Oliver Stone) an idiot….”These conspiratorialists are idiots: pernicious, destructive, fatuous idiots.”

Poor Conrad, he had a bad day today. Not as bad as going back to the clinker, but he faces an Ontario securities hearing that could ban him from buying or trading. And just last month the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reached an agreement with Black preventing him from acting as the director of a public company. And just yesterday while he was penning his screed, the U.S. securities regulator said he must pay $4.1 million in restitution in a settlement that ends a long-standing lawsuit over Black’s dealings as the head of the Hollinger media empire. He was released from U.S. prison more than a year ago after serving a sentence for fraud and obstruction of justice.

Relax and have a biscuit, Conrad…the Canadians have postponed their hearings until October.

The funny things is, I think the S.E.C. was on a witchhunt…just like he has joined a witchhunt.

# # #

Banishing the Cathars

By Ned May

Gates of Vienna

August 16, 2013

In the late 12th and early 13th centuries a splinter sect of Christianity became popular in the Languedoc region of Aragon, in what is now France. The movement is known to historians as the Albigensian Heresy, and its adherents are often referred to as Cathars, although it is doubtful whether they used that term to describe themselves. They were persecuted and eventually crushed by the Church of Rome under the leadership of Pope Innocent III. The dénouement was ugly and bloody, as was the case with most religious conflicts in medieval Europe.

From the perspective of the established Christian Church, Albigensian doctrine was definitely a heresy. It was an attempt to resolve what is nowadays known as “the problem of evil”, and the Cathars accomplished this through theological dualism, by positing the existence of two deities, a good one (God) who created the spiritual realm and heaven, and an evil one (Satan), who created the Earth and dross matter. The two deities were in constant battle with one another, and would remain so until the End of Days.

However, it wasn’t their doctrine that made the Albigensians dangerous, it was their political impact. Some local political leaders supported the Cathars, and dissident bishops found it expedient to back them as a foil against Rome. The popularity of the sect sealed its fate, and the Roman hierarchy eventually regained full ecclesiastical control of southern France.

Although it is only figuratively bloody, the current uproar over Diana West’s book American Betrayal reminds me of the reaction to a medieval heresy. There is no room for gentlemanly disagreement: anything that is viewed as an incorrect interpretation of historical events must be ruthlessly exterminated.

Today’s installments in the ongoing drama showed no signs of any return to civility regarding the book. The most prominent of the less-than-courteous reviewers is Conrad Black, who in NRO and The New York Sun referred to Diana West as a “right-wing loopy” exhibiting “jejune dementedness”, among other epithets. Mr. Black provides a long discourse on the history of the Second World War, but it remains unclear whether he has actually read American Betrayal, or whether he simply gleaned snippets about it from reading earlier denunciations of the book by some of its prominent critics.

Ms. West has responded to this latest salvo, also at NRO. Numerous other attacks on the book appeared today, some of them nastier than Mr. Black’s, by various writers from the “mainstream” Right as well as from the Left.

For sympathetic support, see John L. Work, “Carpet-Bombing American Betrayal At Amazon”.

Thanks to Ronald Radosh and David Horowitz, Ms. West’s book has become so controversial that more and more people are airing their opinions about it, both positive and negative. This cannot help but increase the book’s sales, so we owe a debt of gratitude to Front Page Magazine.

So what’s going on here? Why has a disagreement that should have centered on the reliability of sources and the interpretation of historical material turned into such a deplorable orgy of mud-slinging?

One must assume that the vicious invective coming from the book’s detractors is a sign that this is indeed a political issue, just as the heresy of the Cathars was a political issue. Powerful people feel they have something to lose, and their vituperation is a sign of their desperate determination to hang onto it. What “it” might be — money, social position, academic standing, the respect of one’s peers — is hard to determine. But there’s little doubt that what we’re witnessing is a struggle to defend crucial turf.

Another sign of the heavy political baggage involved is the fact that since the first barrage was launched by Ronald Radosh last week, no prominent conservatives — what I would term “celebrities”, if conservatism had such creatures — have stood up to decry the ad hominem attacks against Diana West by people who have never read her book.

In contrast, ordinary people are standing up and saying that Messrs. Horowitz and Radosh are wrong, and saying it “to their faces” in the comments section on Front Page and other venues. These “little people” must have nothing to lose, because they are fearless about speaking out.

But prominent people… Well, that’s another matter. They stand to lose [fill in the blank here — funding, a seat on the board at Heritage, being invited to make an appearance as a talking head at Fox News, being allowed to publish at prominent sites, having their own books recommended by orthodox reviewers, etc.], so they don’t stand up. They don’t let themselves be counted as opposing the personal attacks on and vilification of a colleague.

The only conceivable explanation for their behavior is fear.

I’m appalled that none of these well-known conservatives is willing to stand up, suck in his gut, throw back his shoulders, and say, “Diana West is a diligent researcher who simply followed investigative leads to reach unpopular conclusions. Treating her this way is WRONG.”

Surely some of them are close enough to retirement to actually say this?

But no: they must preserve their cherished positions in the pecking order of prominent right-wingers. Better that Diana West should go to the stake.

It’s pathetic that Gates of Vienna, of all places, has to be the front line of defense for Ms. West. We are less than a microbe in the conservative ecology. Where are the lumbering dinotheres, for crying our loud?

There is a sad lesson to be learned here, and it has nothing to do with whether Diana West is right or wrong about any particular conclusions she draws. A larger battle is being fought, but much of it is occluded from public view, and not available for scrutiny by the little people.

Two final notes:

Dr. John Earl Haynes is a noted historian and expert on American communism and Soviet espionage in the USA who has written numerous books and articles on the topic, often in collaboration with Harvey Klehr. He sent us an email earlier today with a link to his latest piece, “Was Harry Hopkins A Soviet Spy?”:

In view of Julius O’Malley’s kind remarks about our work in the course of his posting about Radosh, West, and Harry Hopkins, I bring to his attention Klehr’s and my post on the issue at FrontPage Mag.

Professor Hans Jansen, the Dutch expert on Islam and sharia who is well-known to Gates of Vienna readers, gave the American Betrayal a five-star review:

We all are too busy and have too many things to do. Nevertheless, this book is obligatory reading, not only for Americans, for European as well.

I’m sure we will have more on all this brouhaha later. Unfortunately.

Update: Diana West sends this comment from Professor Hans Jansen, which he gave permission to publish:

The polemics against your Betrayal have a familiar smell: the masters of the guild get angry when someone less worthy than they are ventures into the orchard in which only they are privileged to harvest. The harvest the outsider brought in, they ritually burn.

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Conrad Black’s Vitriol Masks His Own Historical Blindspot

By Andrew G. Bostom

Family Security Matters

August 17, 2013

The late military intelligence historian Eduard Mark, whose 1998 analysis identified FDR "co-President" Harry Hopkins as "Source 19" in a cable putatively authored by Soviet spymaster Iskhak Akhmerov, lamented,

the indifference of American diplomatic historians to intelligence and of their predominantly liberal political orientation which has led them to ignore the whole question of the relationship between internal security and foreign policy as smacking of ‘McCarthyism'

Irrespective of Conrad Black's current political orientation, his vitriolic attack on Diana West, and her book American Betrayal, epitomizes the mindset identified with rare candor by Mark-who was not a political conservative.

Black's 2003 Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom includes this bowdlerized characterization of Alger Hiss, allegedly redressing "lurid allegations" by McCarthyite bogeymen, while trivializing Hiss's influence at the seminal 1945 Yalta Conference (pp. 1079-80):

Because of the lurid allegations by McCarthyite Republicans in the early fifties, a word must be said about Alger Hiss, who attended the Yalta Conference as a junior State Department official specializing in international organizations. Hiss was eventually revealed as a former member of a Communist espionage ring in the United States, and was convicted of perjury on the dogged examination of Congressman Richard Nixon. Roosevelt had never met Hiss before Yalta, and never spent one minute alone with him at Yalta, according to [FDR interpreter Charles] Bohlen, who was with Roosevelt throughout as interpreter and counselor in Soviet matters, Hiss's chief contribution at the conference was a sensibly reasoned argument against giving the Soviet Union three votes in the international organization. In this, as in all other matters, while he was competent and unexceptionable in his functions, Hiss had no influence whatever on Roosevelt or American policy at Yalta.

Black does not provide a single footnote for any of these assertions, including his final statement about Hiss's alleged lack of influence. Fortunately, there is a well-documented corrective to Black's sanitized court history account of the role Alger Hiss played at Yalta, written, collaboratively, by Cold War scholars par excellence, Herbert Romerstein, and M. Stanton Evans. In Stalin's Secret Agents, which was just published this past November, 2012, they dedicate a chapter to the actual role Alger Hiss played at Yalta, dubbed eponymously, "See Alger Hiss About This," based upon a telltale quote by former FDR Secretary of State Edward Stettinius.

Romerstein and Evans open their discussion by explaining how it came about that Hiss, whom the authors acknowledge, circa January, 1945, was "of fairly junior status-a mid-level employee who wasn't even head of a division"-was in fact singled out by President Roosevelt himself as someone to accompany the President to Yalta. Citing the diaries of Edward Stettinius Jr., US Secretary of State at the time of Yalta, one month before the conference convened, they record how FDR told Stettinius, "he did not want to have anyone accompany him in an advisory capacity, but he felt Messrs. Bowman and Alger Hiss ought to go." (A note added by Romerstein and Evans clarifies that Dr. Isaiah Bowman was a Stettinius adviser who had been involved with the post- World War I Versailles Conference, but did not go to Yalta.)

Before elucidating the significant role Hiss in fact played at Yalta, Romerstein and Evans remind us, rather understatedly, who Hiss was:

Alger Hiss...was a secret Communist serving in the wartime State Department, identified as a Soviet agent by ex-Communist Whittaker Chambers, a former espionage courier for Moscow's intelligence bosses. This identification led to a bitter quarrel that divided the nation into conflicting factions and would do so for years to follow. The dispute resulted in the 1950 conviction of Hiss for perjury when he denied Chambers charges under oath, denials that ran contrary to the evidence then and to an ever-increasing mass of data later.

Contrary to Black's glib assertions, both the incomplete Yalta compilation published by the State Department, and more clearly, the Stettinius papers, demonstrate Hiss's central role at Yalta. A revelatory State Department official entry documents the wide-ranging authority Stettinius conferred upon Hiss:

At the Secretary's staff committee meeting of January 10, the Secretary asked that all memoranda for the President on topics to be discussed at the meeting of the Big Three should be in the hands of Alger Hiss not later than Monday, January 15.

As Romerstein and Evans observe,

This was just nine days after FDR and Stettinius discussed having Hiss go to Yalta, in which span he had somehow risen from obscurity to become custodian of "all memoranda for the President" on topics to be considered at the summit-not bad positioning for a Soviet agent whose nominal chieftain, FDR, would soon be meeting with his real one, Stalin. Nor was this the only indication in the records of the role played by Hiss and his skill at collecting information.

But it is Secretary of State Stettinius's diaries and other confidential papers which reveal how intimately he and Hiss worked together at Yalta, and how heavily Stettinius leaned on his junior colleague's expertise on a broad range of issues. Romerstein and Evans provide this overview:

The documents indicate that Hiss was an outspoken participant in the Yalta sessions, addressing a wide array of topics and at times dealing virtually as an equal with British foreign secretary Anthony Eden and other high officials. As Hiss was the American on the scene most conversant with U.N. affairs, he of course had a lot to say about that subject, but his role was by no means limited to such matters.

Among the topics on which Hiss held forth, often in authoritative manner, were the conduct of China policy by the Allies, establishment of a high commission to govern peacetime Europe, the role of France in the postwar era, and occupation zones in Germany once the Nazis had surrendered. The Stettinius diaries likewise depict Hiss as a knowledgeable source on one of the most contentious issues raised at Yalta-the use of German compulsory labor as a form of human "reparations." Along with other data on such matters, the Stettinius papers show there were few subjects at the meeting on which Hiss wasn't a significant player.

Romerstein and Evans also illuminate how Hiss's consummate ability "to position himself at the crossroads of information" throughout his tenure at the State Department, even as a junior staff member (in 1936), impressed his fellow Communists:

...one KGB report quoted State Department official Laurence Duggan, himself an oft-identified pro-Soviet agent, as saying Hiss was "the one who had everything important from every division on his desk, and must be one of the best informed people," in the department. The KGB lamented that Hiss was already spoken for by the rival GRU (military intelligence) saying that if the KGB had such a source at State "no one else would really be needed."

Conrad Black's willful blindness to Hiss's well-documented machinations, before and during Yalta, should give serious pause to those who accept Black's warped characterization of Diana West and American Betrayal at face value.

Andrew G. Bostom, M.D., M.S. (Providence, RI), is the author of the highly acclaimed The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Renal Diseases at Rhode Island Hospital, the major teaching affiliate of Brown University Medical School. Dr. Bostom has published numerous articles and commentaries on Islam in the Washington Times, National Review Online, Revue Politique, FrontPage Magazine.com, American Thinker, and other print and online publications. More of his work can be found at www.andrewbostom.org.

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In Defense of Diana West and 'American Betrayal'

By Michael McCann

Family Security Matters

August 19, 2013

Diana West's latest book, American Betrayal, is a serious, astute and thorough examination of the penetration of Soviet agents and fellow travelers at the highest levels of the United States government beginning in the 1930s. In it, she documents the destructive, covert influence the Soviet Union had upon American foreign and domestic policy at one of the most crucial junctures in our history. It is story long overdue in the telling.

Anyone involved in historical research or study will immediately appreciate the depth and complexity of West's undertaking. There are nearly a thousand end notes based on a wealth of contemporary sources as well as thousands of pages of archival material made available since the fall of the Soviet Union. Her unique gift is the ability to sift through and organize mountains of materials and, most importantly, to connect the dots. This she does cogently, seamlessly, and eloquently. She writes very, very well and yes, it is a detective story. It is a detailed exploration of a period of history that changed the world and you will not look at our history in the same way again.

Why, then the visceral, personal attack on Diana West by Frontpage Mag?  The revelations of her powerful narrative seemed to have rocked the boat. When I read David Horowitz's initial editorial response, I honestly wondered if he read the same book I read or if he had, indeed, read the book at all. After attacking her competency, Horowitz writes, "West has already shown herself to be a very angry, very self-centered and a very reckless partisan, with a paranoid streak and a disposition to think in extreme terms that have only a tenuous and deceptive relation to the truth." With effort, I can think of a few people who might fit this description but the least likely is Diana West.

I categorically reject his statement, word for word, as having no basis in truth. Such a statement cannot be surmised or even remotely construed from her recent book or from any of her many articles with which I am familiar. Where, how and why did Horowitz come up with this? As regards to competency, her work speaks for itself. This is not the problem. But when he says, "It's not about our desire to suppress West's ideas...", I would say, it is exactly about suppressing her ideas and doing so immediately before they gain more traction. Moreover, the venom and stridency of this unwarranted attack goes beyond all bounds of decency.  How does one characterize the attempt to destroy someone and a reputation built over a lifetime? There is no instance in which this O.K. A dispassionate collegial dispute among peers would have been of benefit to all. What we observe is Horowitz's authoritarianism bordering on the sadistic with the obvious and singular goal to humiliate, cause pain and destroy. This is as readily apparent as it is reprehensible.

I have slight hope that something conciliatory could occur, where apologies would be given and accepted and equilibrium restored but the chain reaction continues. Clarice Feldman writes an article in American Thinker entitled, "Demagogic Writers and the People Who Love Them". While unbelievably admitting to have never read West's book, she blithely dives into the fray, regurgitating the entire animus found on FP. Now we have a whisper game without heed given to the sources or to the consequences for real life people. The only reason I include a quote from her article is to show the contempt she has and obviously FP has for readers who have chosen to disagree with them:

I have little patience with amateurs who take advantage of the internet and cable news to delve into political and diplomatic history willy nilly, taking advantage of the poor educations of their target audience  an audience that is hurting, confused by conflicting truth-claims, and looking for guidance.

Feldman included this to explain the, "...vicious, personalized, heated responses to Radosh's criticism of West's work by West and her fans" In other words, the response to Ron Radosh articles published on FP, (which has been overwhelmingly in favor of Diana West) is so, not because the readers are intelligent, well informed and objective but rather the opposite according to her insulting caricature. As she did not read West's book, I doubt if she read any one of the well reasoned responses posted by readers either. Furthermore, I doubt if she is aware of the irony in her own use of the word "amateur", in the above quote, inasmuch as she couldn't be bothered to conduct her own research. Certainly, she is unaware of her self-parody, "Demagogic Writers and the People That Love Them", as she appears to be a blind, unfortunate and thoughtless follower of Ron Radosh, parroting his every word and every accusation.

In reviewing Ron Radosh's article, "Diana West Down Crack Pot Alley" several things become clear. One of course, already well illustrated by Horowitz, is the old left penchant for vilification, that is, the object is not to refute but to destroy. Thus far I have not seen a credible refutation. Ron Radosh's "factual" critiques of American Betrayal are freighted with error; they are strong opinions with a very personal bias. His motives for writing are demonstrably less than honorable.

Radosh writes "What I want to discuss is why I took upon myself the job of writing a lengthy and detailed critique of West's book. First, as a historian and a conservative, I believe that my responsibility is to the truth. I cannot countenance conspiracy theories, whether they come from those on the Left or those on the Right." After proclaiming his righteousness, objectivity and dedication to truth, he essentially compares himself to William Buckley and compares Diana West to Robert Welch of the John Birch Society. He is wrong on both counts. The point of the comparison, however, is nothing less than to build a basis and rationale for his auto-de-fe.

William Buckley was a great man and a moral man. In the political sphere, he did more than any other to place the conservative movement on a firm intellectual foundation in order to challenge the liberal establishment. I believe, without a doubt, he would welcome Diana West and her contributions for the very same reasons he welcomed his friend Whittaker Chambers on an earlier day. I think he would have admired her courage, honesty, intellect and humor. Unlike Ron Radosh, William Buckley was not a book burner. Furthermore, he was a rare breed of gentleman noted for cordial social relationships, even with those with whom he disagreed. Ron Radosh has chosen a far lesser path.

Radosh, in attempting to establish the need to maintain the "purity" of the conservative movement, is dangerously undermining its core tenants, notably intellectual freedom, a prerequisite in the search for truth. However, I don't think empirical evidence is his concern. In reality, Dr. Radosh is introducing a lame, albeit new version of McCarthyism for the purpose of censoring others with whom he disagrees.

He is sounding the alarm on behalf of conservatives everywhere, "There is a Bircher under my bed!" This is confusing, coming from the man who can't countenance conspiracy theory. I do not think this is a classical case of psychological projection. I think it would be more accurate to say he is very craftily refurbishing or morphing the McCarthy myth into a new and updated "Bircher" myth for the purpose of silencing others within conservative circles. How is it that Professor Radosh feels empowered to speak for conservatism, let alone as the "Voice of History"?

Radosh has struck a pose that has a lot of appeal to those self-appointed censors on the left and the right seeking to control who is allowed to study, comment and analyze history and what conclusions are appropriate. Our milieu has been created by just such intellectual pretense, thuggery and arrogance emanating from Jacobins who "...presume to confer certificates of correct thinking."

Diana West's book challenges the present public perception of an era that has been formed by the left and empowered by the intellectual class but which is no longer sustainable in view of available information. The animosity currently directed against Diana West is because of her successful attempt to explore and clarify a history that academic circles are no longer intellectually or morally entitled to ignore and avoid. For her splendid efforts, I am most grateful.

Michael McCann is a retired builder and citizen journalist with a lifelong interest in history, culture and social issues, with a special focus on the Soviet phenomenon.

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Conrad Black’s FDR Idolatry

Robert Stacy McCain

The Other McCain

August 19, 2013

My parents were New Deal Democrats, but I grew up at a time and in a place when Republicans were extraordinarily rare. I’ve often said I never actually met a Republican until I went to college and, now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t until my junior year. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-30s that I became an ex-Democrat, and so I completely understand the quasi-religious reverence that Democrats have for FDR, Harry Truman and JFK. What puzzles me nowadays is that some conservatives seem to share that attitude.

National Review has published a column by Conrad Black which calls Diana West’s new book American Betrayal a “farrago of lies,” and I just don’t know what to say, except that (a) Black doesn’t seem to have read West’s book, and (b) is therefore attacking the straw man version of West’s argument, as presented by Ron Radosh.

As I said last week, the attacks by Radosh and David Horowitz have made it impossible “to view [American Betrayal] in an unprejudiced light,” and I fear that the resulting controversy will turn into one of those festering wounds akin to the attacks on Mel Bradford that prevented Bradford, a brilliant scholar, from becoming head of the National Endowment for the Humanities under Reagan. The whole neocon/paleocon feud can be traced to that episode and, however real the substance of the ideological dispute, it’s the vicious tactics I lament.

What you find, if you examine the history of that quarrel, is that the neocons (and by this term, I especially mean those associated with the Claremont Institute) seem to crave the authority of Platonic archons, to promulgate and defend “noble lies” about American history, to decide who are the heroes and who are the villains, so that in the place of actual history, we have instead a political myth.

Feuds over 19th-century history that attached the stigma of “controversial” to Bradford’s name are, it seems, now being replicated in regard to 20th-century history, with Roosevelt replacing Lincoln as the sanctified figure who cannot be examined critically. And just as criticizing Lincoln resulted in Bradford being stigmatized as “pro-slavery” (a ridiculous accusation to make in 1981), so now FDR’s critics are faced with the not-too-subtle insinuation that they are pro-Nazi.

Are the choices really so stark? Must we only praise FDR, or else be suspected of being Hitler sympathizers? Or was Lincoln’s statesmanship so unquestionably wise that no one may criticize “Honest Abe” without being accused of “white supremacy”?

Is it any accident, really, that both of these myths involve wartime leaders whose influence tended toward the centralization of power in Washington and development of the “Imperial Presidency”?

Yet both FDR and Lincoln were, in their own time, extraordinarily controversial figures. Once you clear away the gauzy myths that hagiographers have erected around them and examine the contemporary record — especially including the criticisms made by their political opponents — the men are perhaps not really less admirable, but their actions are seen as choices subject to second-guessing, and their philosophies of government lose much of their glow.

A preference for beautiful myth over ugly fact is a dangerous thing, and I wish people would stop to think that someday in the future, these mythmakers will be worshiping at the altar of Obama.

The controversies of our own era will eventually be reduced to a couple of pages in the high-school history textbook and, having lived through a half-century of history myself, I shudder at the thought. Already, one sees liberals trying to portray the shift of the Democrat “Solid South” toward the GOP as motivated entirely by racism when, in fact, it was controversies over Cold War foreign policy that did the most to undermine Democratic hegemony in the South, which has always been the most warlike region of America (and which was always the most fiercely anti-Communist).

The Radosh/Horowitz assault on Diana West’s American Betrayal took me by surprise because I’ve known Diana West for many years, and know she is no Buchananite paleoconservative. She is a regular Reaganite Republican, and certainly cannot be tarred with the brush of anti-Semitism that has been applied to Pat Buchanan.

It strikes me, however, that West’s critique of FDR’s foreign policy as too pro-Soviet, which would require conservatives to re-examine the standard history of World War II, might be viewed as “lending aid and comfort” to the paleoconservative enemy. That is to say, while West herself is a mainstream “movement conservative,” her undermining of the Rooseveltian mythos may pose the threat of redeeming the Robert Taft-style Old Right isolationism. So if you question FDR’s fundamental righteousness, you are a conspiracy theorist, and quite possibly (by implication) pro-Nazi.

Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna offered a lengthy examination of the controversy Sunday, linking Dr. Andrew Bostom’s rebuttal to Conrad Black’s National Review article. I remain Diana West’s ally in this fight because whatever errors she may have made, from the standpoint of professional historians, she is asking important questions and calling attention to facts that have been too long ignored by those who prefer convenient myth to historical truth.

# # #

Backfire: The Public Smackdown of Diana West

By Shari Goodman

Family Security Matters

August 20, 2013

Diana West, author of American Betrayal, has recently found herself under a barrage of attacks, not from the usual Leftists suspects, but from two former Communists turned Neo-Cons, David Horowitz and his friend of 60 years, fellow Neo-Con Ronald Radosh.

Under the guise of "setting the record straight and scholarly research," which would have been sufficient had they confined their attack to historical facts in a civil and respectful manner, they resorted to a vicious mean-spirited personal public smackdown of a woman who meticulously devoted over 900 footnotes as evidence to support her allegations of Soviet infiltration within our halls of government, beginning with the Roosevelt administration.

With columns entitled "McCarthy on Steroids" and ad hominem accusations of sloppy journalism, the backlash against Horowitz and Radosh by readers has been swift. Instead of issuing an apology for engaging in personal attacks upon a fellow Conservative, they have doubled down in their defense under the guise of "historical accuracy". Had they engaged in a professional review and confined their criticism upon her work, they may have had credibility, but instead they have chosen to attack not only her work, but Diana West herself. By describing her conclusions as the "Birch Society type conspiracy history theory of Communism" an immediate death sentence for any credible writer, they sought to do to her what William Buckley did to the Birchers. It is the gutter of yellow journalism that they have chosen to embrace, and the public wisely recognized it for what it was. Reactions from readers were overwhelmingly in support of Diana with an outpouring of stinging criticism directed at Horowitz and Radosh. Incapable of self-reflection, they resorted to attacking the readers.

Good men can agree to differ without resorting to name calling, and the assassination of one's work and good name is vicious and cruel. Unlike Radosh and Horowitz, the criticism of Diana's book by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr was respectful and civil while Horowitz and Radosh appear to have a personal vendetta against Diana West. To describe Diana, an author and columnist who has dedicated her life to public service as "very angry, very self-centered with a paranoid streak and a disposition to think in extreme terms that have only a tenuous and deceptive relation to the truth" is not only false, but it defines David Horowitz much more than Diana West.

Resorting to familiar tactics advocated by Saul Alinsky in Rules For Radicals, and employed by the Left in their take down of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, the former Communists used the familiar tool of ridicule in their effort to marginalize West. Judging from readers comments, the frequently asked question is "why?". Had they succeeded in correcting the historical record which they have not done, they would have had more credibility, but their criticism is directed at Diana's inferences and conclusions which historians frequently do when gathering evidence. Often there are gaps in gathering historical information and it becomes the norm for the researcher to be left connecting the dots. So the question remains what is the motive for assassinating her body of work and her good name?

One can only speculate, but perhaps it is her successful venture into what they consider their field of expertise and their exclusive domain. While Horowitz has been strutting his drum in the public arena for decades, his achievements on the public stage remain elusive. Yes, he was instrumental in creating the Freedom Center as an instrument to counter the Left's propaganda while raking in millions of dollars in the process. Yet, the Left's hold on college campuses, the media, and Hollywood is stronger then ever.

The Muslim Brotherhood continues their successful penetration of our campuses and anti-Israel activism such as divestment has gained momentum. A Muslim Brotherhood operative, Sadia Saifudding, was recently named to the U.C. Board of Regents, and under the guise of "freedom of ideas in the marketplace" Horowitz single handedly handed them a win when he publicly condemned a petition which sought the Muslim Student Association removal from the UCLA campus. Ironically, in his effort to protect freedom of speech for a seditious Muslim Student Association whose noblest ideal is to "die for Allah" he successfully suppressed over 1000 voices who signed the petition.

Unfortunately, there is no "freedom of ideas in the marketplace", in our universities, or in the media. Conservative voices are shunned and shut down and the only voice heard is that of the Left. Horowitz should know better, and if not, then he is not the man to lead our effort as we struggle to turn the tide in our campaign to change the political landscape. The millions of dollars his Freedom Center receives in donations from those who believe his message would be better spent elsewhere where deeds actually accompany the rhetoric of the messenger.

While Horowitz and Radosh proclaim to have left the Left, it is apparent that the Left has not left them. While employing Leftist tactics to destroy a fellow Conservative, they have handed the Left a win. It is also irrelevant if that was not their intent, because the only winner to benefit from this attack is the Left. While both men may possess a lot of knowledge, what they are clearly lacking is wisdom.

I have not met Diana West nor am I a historical scholar, but as a human being I along with many others take offense at the vicious and cruel treatment she has received from Horowitz and Radosh. Neither has proven their case against American Betrayal, but in their attempt to smear Diana West they have succeeded in tarnishing their own names. Akin to schoolyard bullies, arrogant in their self-importance and position of power, they pounced on a woman who dared to successfully play in their yard. By not confining their criticism to scholarship they have proven themselves to be assassins guilty of attempting to deprive Diana of her credibility and livelihood. Decency demands that good men and women stand up and denounce these assassins for their moral deficiency. The Conservative movement deserves better and Diana West deserves a public apology.

Shari Goodman is an educator and a chapter leader for ACT! For America. Her views are her own and are not necessarily representative of ACT! For America. Her columns have appeared in Family Security Matters, Israel Today, and the Los Angeles Times.

# # #

Canadian poet David Solway, a longtime contributor to Frontpage and Pajamas Media, was unable to place the following piece at his regular outlets.

Disagreements among Conservatives

By David Solway

Family Security Matters

August 20, 2013

The Proper Way to Handle Controversy

The controversy surrounding Diana West's new book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on our Nation's Character, that erupted over the last week on the Internet vividly illustrates a point I made, and perhaps belabored, in several recent articles; namely, a radical split is occurring within conservative ranks that threatens its long-term cohesion and presents the liberal/left with a pronounced and supplementary advantage in the culture wars. West's book, as is now becoming common knowledge among a growing readership, documents in painstaking detail the Soviet infiltration of the American administrations during World War II and the Cold War period. According to West, U.S. policy was substantially impacted by an effective Soviet espionage and recruitment network. Moreover, the scandal was afterwards covered up so massively and systematically that very few of us are aware of the extent of the deception.

American Betrayal is crammed with detail: facts, dates, FBI transcripts, Venona cables, recorded and reported high-level conversations, newspapers, letters, memoirs, decrypts, books, archives, all building up a case that cannot-indeed, should not-fail to demand our respectful attention, whether we agree with it or not. Unless, that is, she and her work are attacked ad hominem-"yellow journalism," "conspiracy thesis," the author of an "awful" book, an approximate Bircher, "virtually screams." This, on my reading, is what Ron Radosh in his damning review of the book appears to have done.

There is, to be fair, a grey zone involving many of the items that remain undecided or contestable, for example, the true identity of KGB Agent 19-but even a profound discord about methods, evidence and conclusions should not be expressed in the disagreeably personal terms employed by Radosh, which generate far more heat than light and do little to advance our historical understanding. Titling his review McCarthy on Steroids-a deliberately insulting implication-Radosh explains that, although he would not "normally...have agreed to review a book [as "bizarre"] as this one," he felt the need to challenge it vigorously because of the "reckless endorsements of its unhinged theories by a number of conservative individuals and organizations." He charges that what is new in West's argument "is either overheated, or simply false and distorted-the sort of truculent recklessness that gives anti-communism a bad name." In a follow-up article, he dismisses West as a denizen of "crackpot alley," (a term he attributes to James Burnham though, so far as I can tell, it's actually Bill Buckley's coinage.) The barrage of execrations continues apace, concluding that West's thinking allows "anti-anti-communism to have a field day in our culture," a remark that strikes me as rather overheated and truculently reckless in itself.

Radosh attempts to explain his modus operandi in a follow-up article: "When self-proclaimed conservatives echo the methodology and conspiratorial type thinking of those on the Left...those of us who want a responsible, sane conservative movement, and a vibrant conservative intellectual culture, have the responsibility to speak out and to criticize, no matter what source it comes from." Good enough. But there are two problems here. One is that of secure designation: for mainstream Republicans, for instance, the Tea Party would constitute an irresponsible and not quite sane form of conservatism that needs to be ridiculed and combatted, whereas for many other thinkers on the right, the Tea Party represents a true, grassroots conservatism that should be lauded and promoted. Is Diana West a Bircher or a patriotic and authentic American? From where I stand, I'd opt for the latter, without the slightest hesitation. But the point is: one must be super-careful with labels.

The other problem is that of style, tone and rhetorical strategy. Disputes of an in-house nature should be carried out in civilized terms. In a review taking exception to a particular work, vulgar accusations should be avoided, correction, if necessary, should be courteously offered, and a saving humility rather than the assumption of a pontifical mantle of infallible authority should be the order of the day. Otherwise, what should be an urbane debate between reputable and erudite allies will inevitably degrade into an unseemly and perilous slugfest-and the only winners are those against whom one should present a reasonably united front. Such vehemence as Radosh evinces is unbecoming.

Oddly enough, amidst all the rumpus and wrangling, the camel in the room is never mentioned in Radosh's critical purview. In her concluding chapter, West brings the issue of clandestine subversion and internal betrayal into the present moment to reveal a structural similarity with an Obama administration that is virtually peppered with Muslim Brotherhood operatives. "Islam is the totalitarian threat of today," she warns; "However, because we continue the ‘deceit and double-speak' we adopted in response to Communism, we are unable to deal with the new threat-the new Communism of today. We deal with Islam the same way we dealt with Communism: Having been subverted and undermined, we apologize and converge." What apparently went under the radar in the 40s, 50s, and later on is slipping by us today as authorities and officials in every walk of life strive to minimize and hide the menace that works to demoralize and defeat us.

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napolean, Marx famously said that history repeats itself, "first as tragedy, then as farce." Perhaps more cogently, as we observe Obama and his minions welcoming Islamic agents and Islamic doctrine into the conduct of both domestic and foreign policy, we might rephrase the adage as: History repeats itself, first as Act I of the tragedy, then as Act II. This seems to be Diana West's gravamen. It is, in my estimation, far more compelling than Radosh's partially nuanced but nonetheless troubling soft-selling of "moderate Islam" in a 2010 article titled A Message to Conservatives: Is Islam Really our Enemy?

In any event, these "proceedings" among conservatives at loggerheads imply a basic question that needs to be addressed. Why would a respected conservative writer attack a fellow conservative writer with such muscular rectitude that he opens an enormous crack in the façade of a much beleaguered movement, inviting its adversaries to exploit the weakness thus exposed? This is a more serious breach than presumably allowing anti-anti communism to run amok. What is it in the conservative sensibility that so readily turns against itself, creating rifts and fissures where there should be a fundamental unanimity regardless of intrinsic differences? This is not a crack, to quote Leonard Cohen, where "the light gets in." It's a crack where the liberal/left gets in, where the darkness gets in, where the opposition can wreak immense damage.

For example, Andrew Sullivan on The Dish, reposted in part on Mother Jones, can barely suppress his glee, encouraging the reader to "get a glimpse of the insanity now dominating what was once a vibrant intellectual culture by reading Ron Radosh's devastating review of the book." Radosh, a conservative, has been conscripted by a left/liberal to reinforce the latter's denunciation. Thanks, Ron, for giving Sullivan (and his cohorts) the key to the city. Indeed, Sullivan doesn't stop there but cites uber-conservative Conrad Black who, like Radosh, resorted not to reasoned critique in his "review" of West on NRO but to unrestrained aspersion in which not a single one of West's arguments was addressed. Rather, for Black, Diana West is "a right-wing loopy" whom we might have hoped had "been house-trained." A gentleman and a scholar does not speak this way. And in any case, all Black got for his labors was another of Sullivan's sneering put-downs: "Sadly, Conrad Black hardly counts." There is one thing conservatives are surely better at than liberals: self-destruction.

Admittedly, I am not sufficiently immersed in specific issues pertaining to the period in question that has aroused such parietal fury to pretend to expertise and arrive at a historical judgment. The subject constitutes a legitimate area of discussion between those who have devoted a considerable part of their scholarly lives to its exploration. My point is that the debate should be pursued in a professional and respectful way between equals who give one another the benefit of the doubt-or at least appear to do so. But Radosh has ignited a firestorm by the incendiary manner he has adopted to refute Diana West. Naturally, conservatives will continue to disagree with one another over issues minor and major, and that is as it should be. But it is to be hoped that our dissensions will be expressed cordially and that conservatives will eschew hyperbole and invective, hysteria and melodrama, and behave toward one another with greater restraint and discretion.

David Solway is a Canadian poet and essayist. He is the author of The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity, and is currently working on a sequel, Living in the Valley of Shmoon. His new book on Jewish and Israeli themes, Hear, O Israel!, was released by Mantua Books. Solway's Global Warning: Trials of an Unsettled Science, was released in June 2012, and his latest book is The Boxthorn Tree, published in December 2012.

# # #

Letter to Diana West

By John Dietrich

John Dietrich Books

August 28, 2013

Dear Diana,

I hope you have sent Ron Radosh and Conrad Black letters of appreciation for their critiques of you book. They could not have done more to discredit your opponents if they had intentionally set out to make them look foolish. A total cynic would suspect that you paid them. Rather than dealing with detailed criticism of your work they relied on vitriol. Black calls your book a "farrago of lies." He calls you and your supporters, "idiots: pernicious, destructive, fatuous idiots," who suffer from "myth-making and jejune dementedness." I disagree with Black. If I call him the "afterbirth of a flatulent pig," would this make my arguments more convincing?

Both Ronald Radosh and Conrad Black refer to you as a "right-wing loopy." Radosh condemns your, "yellow journalism conspiracy theories," your "truculent recklessness that gives anti-communism a bad name" and your "unhinged theories." Your judgment is "bizarre on its face, but also unwarranted by the evidence." Yours is a, "shallow and erroneous interpretation." He claims your, "counterfactual speculations are not regarded as realistic possibilities by any reputable historian of the era," and your "book perpetuates the dangerous one dimensional thinking of the Wisconsin Senator." You are "McCarthy on steroids."

This is all very convincing. Radosh neglected to make the most devastating charge: "West is a poopoo head." Pardon the sarcasm, but Radosh's accusations are not worthy of an intelligent discussion of complex issues.

This criticism of you sounds eerily familiar. Similar things were said of Senator McCarthy, Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers. You are condemned for believing in conspiracy theories. What was the Communist infiltration of the U.S. government if not a conspiracy? Radosh admits that he has no disagreement with you over whether the Roosevelt administration was infiltrated or whether Soviet dupes were influential in affecting administration policy. The disagreement lies in your opinion of the extent of this influence. Your critics claim that you exaggerate the extent of Communist influence on U.S. policy. However, your critics attempt to minimize this influence.

Progressives have come to the defense of the Rosenbergs, Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White and numerous others. Radosh claims your allegation that, "Hopkins was an actual Soviet agent . . . is, in fact, not true." Black called this an "unfounded new flourish." How do they know this? Loopy right-wingers have accused many administration officials of being Communists. Many "experts" disagreed and questioned the sanity of such claims. When the evidence becomes overwhelming progressives quietly let the matter drop and go to the defense of the next "progressive." Leftists are experts at deception. Even obvious Soviet atrocities like the Ukrainian famine and the Katyn Massacre were denied for years by "progressives." Someone approaching this subject without bias must conclude that the "loopy right-wingers" have more credibility than the "experts."

I have read extensively on the subjects dealt with in your book, yet several items you deal with were entirely new to me. I had previously accepted the progressive myth that the policy of "unconditional surrender" had spontaneously popped out of FDR's head during the Casablanca Conference. As you point out this policy was the product of a committee which included several influential Soviet agents. One might be tempted to ask, "What difference at this point does it make?" Well, although most Communists were removed from government in the early 50's their progressive comrades remained. Their offspring have captured the commanding heights of our society. They have almost total control of the media, academia and the government bureaucracy. From these commanding heights they are transforming our society. In order to do this they must conceal the part played by progressives in the massive crimes they were a party to.

People come to the subject of Communist infiltration of the Roosevelt administration with a bias. I come to the subject with an inclination to be suspicious of the Roosevelt administration. After reading your book I realized that I had not been suspicious enough.

I knew American Communists had a decisive influence on American policy from the research I had done on my own book, The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy. I have not examined Lend-Lease and the second front issues to any great extent, but I am thoroughly familiar with the policy devised for postwar Europe. Here there is little doubt the Joseph Stalin was the "puppetmaster of American war policy." Your claim that, “World War II could have been ended years earlier had Communists working for Moscow not dominated Washington," is certainly plausible. This would not have required an entente with Hitler’s army against Stalin, only a sincere message that the U.S. government did not intend to turn Germany into a potato patch.

Radosh cites S. M. Plokhy to show that the Soviets treated American POWs fairly well. How familiar is Radosh with this subject? One of the first acts of the Red Army upon entering Germany was to butcher 50 French and Belgian POWs at Nemmersdorf. The Soviets believed that all POWs were traitors. Stalin's own son, a prisoner of the Germans, may have committed suicide as a result of this Soviet policy. Soviet treatment of U.S, POWs is more complex than can be dismissed with the statement, "the Soviets treated American POWs fairly well." I suggest he read Nigel Cawthorne's Iron Cage.

One subject you did not cover was the progressives involvement in the modern slave trade. Perhaps you avoided this subject because it is obviously an absurd accusation that would have only increased the intensity of the progressive attack on your work. Absurd or not, according to Secretary of State, James Byrnes in his inappropriately entitled Frankly Speaking, "Forced labor camps are a symbol of Hitler's regime that we should eliminate as rapidly as possible." This would be fertile ground for an aspiring historian wanting to make a name for himself by exposing how evil "we" were.

I have only one criticism of your book, one that I believe you would totally agree with: your use of the word "we."  The current genre of historiography places a good deal of emphasis on "our" crimes.  Amerika is responsible for all kinds of crimes, real and imagined. You say that "we" were accomplices in Soviet crimes. When discussing U.S. recognition of the Soviet Union during the Ukrainian famine you claim "we" became "a passive accomplice to Stalin in the Ukraine." When discussing the forced repatriation of Soviet citizens towards the end of the war, you state, "We became accessories to a Soviet atrocity." You claim that in our dealings with the Soviets, "We had things to hide, too." Well "we" had and have nothing to hide. Once this is made clear the conundrum is solved. You point out that, "officialdom was enraged not by the danger posed by Hiss, but by Chambers for testifying to the danger." Progressives are more outraged by Joseph McCarthy than by Joseph Stalin. You quote Vladimir Bukovsky who explains "we now understand why the West was so against putting the communist system on trial. There was ideological collaboration between left-wing parties in the West and Soviet Union." As you have written, "The forces of concealment, East and West, had a common enemy in the forces of exposure, East and West." You are a member of the "forces of exposure" and as such not a "we."

My book could be considered an anti-American book because of its criticism of American policy. It is not. The crimes detailed in the book are not America's crimes. They are the crimes of a group of "progressives" who did not have America's interests at heart.

Finally, I would like to thank you for referencing my book and describing it as "devastating." I will send you a copy of the second edition when it appears in the fall.

John Dietrich is the author of The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy.

# # #

When Should a Book Not Be Written?

By Ned May

Gates of Vienna

August 30, 2013

“A perversion of logic as much as a loss of courage”

Diana West spoke last night as a guest of Ahavath Torah Congregation in Stoughton, Massachusetts. Her topic was the continuing controversy over her book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character.

In the following clip you’ll hear Ms. West point out the manifest falsehoods that have been circulated about American Betrayal. They seem to represent an attempted “takedown” of her book, a deliberate assault intended to destroy her professional standing as a writer.

The author also explains how she fell into the research that eventually resulted in the book. She began by investigating an entirely different topic, the penetration of the United States government by agents of the Muslim Brotherhood, and followed the trail of evidence back to Communist penetration in the 1930s and 1940s. The parallels between the two cases are striking — each involves the subversion of our government by a totalitarian ideology that seeks the overthrow of our constitutional republic.

Many thanks to The United West for recording the event, and to Vlad Tepes for editing this excerpt.

I recommend watching the full two-hour video at United West. Diana West’s talk begins at about 12:30, and a Q&A follows her remarks. You’ll hear a lot about what what’s in the book, including some quotes read by the author, and more remarks about the nexus between what happened in the 1940s and the current “civilization jihad” against our country.

# # #

The following appeared at the Gatestone Institute website before it was abruptly removed. Its author, Clare M. Lopez, was then fired — fired — for, as Gatestone's Nina Rosenwald told Lopez in an email, Lopez’s “choice of books to promote.” Outrageous! The piece is archived at Ruthfully Yours.

Recognizing the Wrong People

By Clare M. Lopez

It is high time we stopped empowering those who wish us ill: not just to recognize a blood-soaked regime, but to keep on recognizing it.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt [FDR], reversing the policy of four presidents and six of their Secretaries of State not to recognize the Soviet government, in 1933 extended “normal diplomatic relations” to the Soviet Union, the totalitarian slaughterhouse of Josef Stalin. As meticulously researched by Diana West in her new book, “American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character,” the reasoning behind Roosevelt’s decision was never made clear; what was clear, however, since the 1917-1919 Bolshevik seizure of the Russian government by force, was the Soviet reign of blood and terror. According to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, by the late 1930s, Stalin’s regime was shooting tens of thousands of people per month. Yet, for reasons that remain murky, FDR was influenced, inspired, or somehow persuaded to normalize U.S. relations with Stalin, in exchange for a page of Soviet concessions, not worth the paper they were written on, which pledged that the USSR “would not attempt to subvert or overthrow the U.S. system.”

What West documents is the subsequent process of infiltration, influence, and “occupation” by an army of communist agents and fellow travelers; here, however, the focus is on what that original 1933 decision has meant for future generations, most especially our own, when confronted with decisions about whether or not to recognize enemies who make no secret of their enmity and intention to destroy us.

Whatever FDR’s thinking, West points out that this decision — not just to recognize the blood-soaked communist regime, but to keep on recognizing it — fundamentally transformed what Robert Conquest, the great chronicler of Stalin’s purges, called “the conscience of the civilized world.” And perhaps not just our conscience: as West writes, “[b]ecause the Communist regime was so openly and ideologically dedicated to our destruction, the act of recognition defied reason and the demands of self-preservation.” In other words, quite aside from the abdication of objective morality represented by FDR’s decision, there was a surrender of “reality-based judgment,” the implications of which on the ability of U.S. national leadership to make sound decisions involving the fundamental defense of the Republic resonate to the current day.

Fast forward to late September 2010, when Mohammed Badi, the Egyptian Supreme Guide of the openly, avowedly jihadist Muslim Brotherhood [MB], literally declared war on the United States (and Israel and unfaithful Arab/Muslim rulers). Badi spoke plainly of “jihad,” “force,” and “a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life.” There was no ambiguity in his message: it anticipated the “demise” of the U.S. in the face of Muslim “resistance.” Even as the Muslim Brotherhood, from the earliest years after its 1928 founding, has always been forthright about its Islamic supremacism and objectives of global conquest, a caliphate, and universal shariah [Islamic Law], Badi’s pronouncement was as clear and menacing as Usama bin Laden’s 1996 “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” or his 1998 declaration of “Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders” — and garnered about as much understanding from the U.S. and Western political leadership of the time — which is to say, very little.

As explained, in fact, in a series of masterful online lectures for the Center for Security Policy [CSP] by Stephen Coughlin, a former Major in the U.S. Army and one of this country’s foremost scholars of Islamic Law, Badi’s October 2010 declaration of jihad against the U.S. followed in direct response to al-Qa’eda’s call to war as published in the inaugural issue, in July 2010, of its online Inspire magazine. This was the alignment of forces that shortly would plunge the Middle East and North Africa [MENA] region into chaos and revolution.

The third and final element to fall into place came in January 2011, in the form of a fatwa from Cairo’s al-Azhar University, the pre-eminent seat of Sunni learning in the Islamic world for over 1,000 years. That landmark declaration, issued at the IslamOnline.net website by Dr. Imad Mustafa, Professor of Fiqh and Its Origins, at the Universities of al-Azhar and Umm al-Qary, made clear that “offensive jihad is permissible in order to secure Islam’s border, to extend God’s religion to people in cases where the governments do not allow it…and to remove every religion but Islam from the Arabian peninsula…”

As we know from Islamic books of law such as the “Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law,” “Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada signifying warfare to establish the religion…” (Reliance, o9.0, ‘Jihad’). So, there was not much room for doubt about what was being discussed: an alignment of al-Qa’eda and the Muslim Brotherhood under the theological sanction of al-Azhar to transition together to a more militant phase of jihad against the West, Israel, and westernized Middle Eastern regimes that have failed to enforce shariah. The green light from U.S. President Barack Obama had already been given months previously, at his milestone June 2009 Cairo speech.

Yet, with every menacing signal plainly presented by the Brotherhood, as with the blatant criminality of the Soviet regime, the senior national security leadership of the U.S. in 2010-2011 still seemed oblivious to the jihadist threat. So oblivious, in fact, was the Department of State under Secretary Hillary Clinton that in early July 2011, it changed a long-standing policy of no official U.S. government recognition of the Muslim Brotherhood, and indicated that henceforth the U.S. proactively would pursue “engagement” with the Egyptian jihadis. The timeline is just about eight months from the Muslim Brotherhood’s declaration of war against the U.S. to full normalization of relations — initiated by the United States — minus any cessation of Muslim Brotherhood hostilities against the U.S. or its allies or even so much as a hudna [temporary ceasefire].

Even after the Egyptian military, urged on by huge numbers of the Egyptian people, ousted the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohammed Morsi in early July 2013, in a decisive coup d’état, followed by bloody street battles with the die-hard jihadis who were also busy slaughtering Coptic Christians across Egypt, the U.S. administration still could not bring itself to turn against its Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood penetration of top-level U.S. policy-making circles (as documented by Patrick Poole in a comprehensive June 4, 2013 essay for the MERIA Journal, entitled, “Blind to Terror: The U.S. Governments Disastrous Muslim Outreach Efforts and the Impact on U.S. Middle East Policy”) is certainly part of the explanation for such irresponsible behavior. The self-destructive legacy of 1933 that bequeathed to FDR’s successors a conditioned willingness to turn away from reality, engage in endlessly wishful thinking, and accept appeasement as an alternative to assertion of national will may well account even more directly for the apparent inability of America’s most senior leadership to acknowledge and confront even those enemies who declare war on us.

The next example of the apparently endless capacity of the human mind for self-deception is the U.S. decision, in March 2011, to enter the Libyan civil war on the side of al-Qa’eda. According to news reports, in early 2011 President Obama issued an “Intelligence Finding” that authorized covert assistance to the al-Qa’eda-dominated rebels fighting to overthrow the longtime Libyan ruler, Muammar Qaddafi. Among the known jihadist militias with which Ambassador Christopher Stevens, the State Department’s official envoy to the Libyan rebel forces, coordinated during the 2011 revolution were: the February 17 Martyrs Brigade; the local al-Qa’eda franchise; Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG, led by Afghanistan veteran Abdelhakim Belhadj); Libya Shield (which fought Qaddafi under the black flag of Islam); and various branches of Ansar al-Shariah, another Libyan al-Qa’eda franchise. Now, even if the most senior levels of the U.S. intelligence community somehow were actually under the impression that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “largely secular” organization that “has eschewed violence,” al-Qa’eda surely was generally acknowledged to be an Islamic terror group, man-caused disaster organization, or at the very least, in early 2011, a group that still posed some level of threat to U.S. national security interests. Yet, all the same, the Obama White House took the decision to dedicate diplomatic, financial, intelligence, military, and weapons support to these Libyan al-Qa’eda militias, along with our NATO allies, to help them oust a brutal tyrant, but at the time, a true ally of the U.S. and the West in the fight against AQIM (Al-Qa’eda in the Islamic Maghreb). By mid-July 2011, however, the U.S. had formally recognized the Libyan rebel leadership as the country’s legitimate government—al-Qa’eda, Muslim Brotherhood, and all.

To what can such a perversion of reason and reality, of common sense, of any measure of American self-interest be attributed: Poole’s Brotherhood penetration of the U.S. foreign policy cadre? More wishful thinking? The illogic of an upside down world view and America’s place in it? Or the pernicious persistence of that first betrayal, the U.S.’s 1933 recognition of Stalin’s murderous gulag of a regime?

As the world confronts the next horror of innocent Syrian men, women, and little children, hundreds of them apparently, killed in late August 2013 by a rocket barrage of the deadly chemical weapon, sarin, the U.S. and the world once again have the opportunity to react rationally, soberly, and with core U.S. national security interests uppermost in consideration. It seems most likely that the Iranian-and-Hizballah-backed regime of Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad is responsible for this latest war crime, and the outcry to empower his al-Qa’eda- and Muslim Brotherhood-dominated rebel opposition has become overwhelming. U.S. naval forces are positioned near Syria in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, pending a White House decision on U.S. action. Yet, even as one side of this intra-Islamic sectarian civil war is getting the worst of it, with more than 100,000 casualties racked up so far, and no end in sight, with chemical weapons against civilians introduced into the conflict, there has never been a more critical need for rational, sober-minded thinking about where U.S. interests and responsibility lie. While a 2012 Presidential Intelligence Finding for Syria authorized the extensive clandestine CIA, financial, and Special Forces training support that has been channeled to Syrian rebels (jihadis and non-jihadis alike), in the months since then, any decision to expand that support, now that chemical weapons have been used against civilians in a large-scale attack, demands a significantly better informed assessment of the probable beneficiaries of such assistance than has been the case to date.

Any decision to deploy U.S. military force beyond a punishing strike against the specific Syrian base and military unit that carried out this chemical weapons atrocity must take into consideration the consequences of an al-Qa’eda and Muslim Brotherhood victory in the Syrian civil war. It is hard to see how enabling the replacement of Iranian proxies and Shi’ite jihadis in Syria with Sunni jihadis aligned with al-Qa’eda and the Muslim Brotherhood will advance either U.S. national security interests in the region or those of our closest allies, Israel and Jordan. Providing generous humanitarian assistance to civilian victims is urgent and right; but, before America recognizes any more totalitarian-minded enemies of genuine liberal democracy, it would do well to enlist common sense, good judgment, and a judicious measure of national self-interest. It is high time we stopped empowering those who wish us ill.

# # #

The Urge to Purge: Strange Events Inspired by Diana West Controversy

By Robert Stacy McCain

The Other McCain

September 6, 2013

In case you missed it, we have been intermittently following the controversy surrounding Diana West’s new book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character:

- June 6: ‘A Conspiracy So Immense’ — Was FDR Aide Harry Hopkins a Soviet Agent?

- Aug. 8: Diana West Dissed by David Horowitz?

- Aug. 16: Major Jordan, Carroll Reece, Birchers, Buckley and the Attack on Diana West

- Aug. 19: Conrad Black’s FDR Idolatry

This is good publicity in the sense that there is no such thing as bad publicity. When you’re trying to attract crowds for a book signing, “controversial author” is excellent advertising, and I hope Diana is holding up amid the firestorm. However, it is beginning to appear that Ronald Radosh and David Horowitz have decided that it is not sufficient to attack Diana’s book. Now, conservative organizations must purge those who do not share their implacable hostility. [West writes]:

Clare M. Lopez, the excellent Middle East analyst and my Team B II colleague, has been fired for favorably mentioning my book in an essay.

Diana links to Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna quoting an e-mail describing how Lopez was informed this week of her termination:

The real shock came the following morning, though, on September 4, when Ms. Lopez received an email from Nina Rosenwald notifying her that her relationship with the Gatestone Institute had been terminated at the request of the Gatestone Board of Directors. On September 5, Ms. Rosenwald confirmed in an email sent to Ms. Lopez and others what some had already suspected, that her firing was due to her “choice of books to promote…,” a clear reference to Ms. Lopez’ citation of historical events from Ms. West’s book. Although Ms. Lopez also had cited about the same 1933 events to a second book, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, by Robert Conquest, for some reason, that reference did not seem to pose any issues for the Board. Only Ms. West’s book about the very same events seemed to irritate the Board, whose recently-appointed Chairman is former UN Ambassador John Bolton.

This is the “urge to purge,” a phrase Allen Sullivant often used to describe the battles within the Sons of Confederate Veterans that began during the mid-1990s, when SCV members angry over liberal attacks on Southern history became politically active.

Activists complained about what they called “eat, meet and retreat” leadership that refused to fight back against the re-location of monuments and re-naming of streets and schools, et cetera, that characterized the Culture Wars waged by the forces of Political Correctness in the South. The clash between activists (“hard-cores,” as they were frequently called) and more moderate leaders devolved into a series of purges and counter-purges, with some of the ousted leaders whining that their activist antagonists were dangerous racists, accusations that only served to further incite the SCV’s liberal enemies. In fact, to those familiar with the inner workings of the SCV, motives of personal ambition were far more relevant to these conflicts than any outsider could understand. Some people were so selfishly obsessed with their own status and prestige — including their authority as arbiters of what constituted “true” Confederate heritage — that they lost any sense of perspective and engaged in unnecessarily harmful tactics that damaged themselves as well as the organization.

Diana West’s critics seem to be engaged in quite a similar crusade against her. There is an “Us and Them” attitude, where neutrality can only be obtained through silence, where anyone who offers an opinion on the controversy is forced to choose sides, and where the basic tactical rule is, “War to the knife, knife to the hilt.”

My long friendship with Diana West obligates me to her defense, despite the fact that I also regard her antagonists as friends.

Since I first became aware of this unfortunate conflict, I’ve urged a truce, or at least a de-escalation of hostilities; instead it has turned into a relentless intellectual civil war with no end in sight.

Your big clue that something unexplained is happening here should be obvious from a glance at Clare Lopez’s biography:

Clare M. Lopez is a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on national defense, Islam, Iran, and counterterrorism issues. Currently a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, the Center for Security Policy and the Clarion Fund and vice president of the Intelligence Summit, she formerly was a career operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, Executive Director of the Iran Policy Committee from 2005-2006, and has served as a consultant, intelligence analyst, and researcher for a variety of defense firms. She was named a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute in 2011.

Whoa! Lopez’s neocon credentials were hitherto impeccable. Neither a Norquist-friendly libertarian nor a Buchananite paleocon could obtain a Lincoln Fellowship from the Strauss/Jaffa hive at Claremont. Ergo, this can only be explained as an internecine fight for supremacy between competing neocon cliques.

Grant the seriousness of the specific historical dispute — and I am certain of David Horowitz’s sincerity in this regard — what kind of backstage machinations were involved in the ouster of a Jaffa-certified neocon from the Gatestone Institute? Is this dispute so serious that these kinds of scorched-earth tactics are justified?

Gatestone Institute President Nina Rosenwald is on Twitter, and perhaps she should be required to explain how this happened.

It is important, I think, to see the crusade against Diana West in proper context. In 2007, National Review permitted Radosh to savage Blacklisted by History, M. Stanton Evans’s definitive defense of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Ann Coulter was obligated to defend Evans, one of her earliest mentors, whom she praised as having written “the greatest book since the Bible.” And Evans himself replied at length to Radosh, quoting Radosh’s review and observing:

This is going pretty heavy on the quotations, but they are offered to suggest what degree of trust may be placed in the assertions and paraphrases of Radosh as to the contents of my book. As these instances suggest, that degree of trust is roughly speaking zero. All of which is very bad, but from my standpoint by no means the worst of it. Far more disturbing is a recurring ad hominem element in Radosh’s comments – revealing a nasty penchant for turning a debate about substantive issues into a species of personal slander.

That is to say, Radosh has a demonstrable habit of harsh rhetoric against conservatives whose writings about Cold War history he disagrees with and, while I’ve never been nominated for any honors in the “Plays Well With Others” sweepstakes, I’m unaware that I’ve ever gotten anyone terminated from a think-tank gig, either.

As I see it — and I admit this may be unfair, but it is my honest impression of this lamentable affair — Radosh is turf-guarding.

Study his biography and it’s hard to avoid this impression. Radosh is a Ph.D. historian and CUNY professor emeritus and you get the idea that he resents these amateur interlopers encroaching on his professional turf. Given his background as a “Red Diaper baby” who subsequently co-authored a book about the Rosenberg espionage case that was extraordinarily controversial when it was published in 1983, you have to see Radosh as a sort of Coriolanus who, having earned his scars in Rome’s service, resents being compelled to condescend to the plebian mob. In other words, it is about respect.

OK, so if you are a conservative who wants to write a book about Cold War history — and especially about Communist subversion – your first move, before even beginning to outline your proposal, must be to consult Radosh, describe your thesis, and ask his permission: “If I write this book, can I expect you to praise it?”

Otherwise, you could become a Controversial Author, which might help sell books, but makes life quite risky for your friends.

American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character – buy it now, before Ron Radosh can burn every copy in existence.

# # #

The Totalitarian Impulse

By Ned May

Gates of Vienna

September 6, 2013

As mentioned here Tuesday night, an article by Clare Lopez was published earlier that day at the Gatestone Institute’s website and then immediately removed. Since Ms. Lopez had referred favorably in her article to Diana West’s book American Betrayal, and since Ms. West recently had anathema pronounced against her for that same book, it seemed that there might be a connection between the two events.

And indeed there was. Our suspicions were correct.

I just received this information from a source close to Clare Lopez:

In late August 2013, Clare Lopez, then a Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, submitted an article for publication at the Gatestone Institute’s website. It was entitled “Recognizing the Wrong People”, and drew on the U.S. government’s 1933 formal diplomatic recognition of the USSR as described in Diana West’s book American Betrayal to form an analogy with the U.S.’s present day recognition and/or support of other fundamentally-anti-American entities, such as the AQ/MB-dominated rebel and opposition forces in places like Egypt, Libya, and Syria.

As with all of Ms. Lopez’ previous articles, this one was well-received by Gatestone’s editor, Nina Rosenwald, who praised it as “so far-sighted.” The article was duly published the morning of Tuesday 3 September 2013 at Gatestone and was sent out to an email list of subscribers. Sometime shortly after that, however, it was pulled from the website, with no notice or explanation.

Word spread quickly as regular Gatestone readers realized something odd had happened.

The real shock came the following morning, though, on September 4, when Ms. Lopez received an email from Nina Rosenwald notifying her that her relationship with the Gatestone Institute had been terminated at the request of the Gatestone Board of Directors. On September 5, Ms. Rosenwald confirmed in an email sent to Ms. Lopez and others what some had already suspected, that her firing was due to her “choice of books to promote…,” a clear reference to Ms. Lopez’ citation of historical events from Ms. West’s book. Although Ms. Lopez also had cited about the same 1933 events to a second book, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, by Robert Conquest, for some reason, that reference did not seem to pose any issues for the Board. Only Ms. West’s book about the very same events seemed to irritate the Board, whose recently-appointed Chairman is former UN Ambassador John Bolton.

It would seem that the legacy of Stalin lives on. The anti-anti-communist movement is alive and well in 21st century America, and so are the vicious public smear tactics of personal vilification to which Diana West has been subjected.

For shame, for shame.

Clare Lopez has not yet been entirely airbrushed out of existence at the Gatestone Institute. Her author archive is still available at the website, and below [is a text version of her bio] in case it disappears down the same memory hole as did her article (or Mark Tapson’s favorable review of American Betrayal at FPM, for that matter).

Clare M. Lopez

Distinguished Senior Fellow, Gatestone Institute

Clare M. Lopez is a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on national defense, Islam, Iran, and counterterrorism issues. Currently a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, the Center for Security Policy and the Clarion Fund and vice president of the Intelligence Summit, she formerly was a career operations officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, Executive Director of the Iran Policy Committee from 2005-2006, and has served as a consultant, intelligence analyst, and researcher for a variety of defense firms. She was named a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute in 2011.

Already an advisor to EMP Act America, in February 2012 Ms. Lopez was named a member of the Congressional Task Force on National and Homeland Security, which focuses on the Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) threat to the nation. She is deputy director of the U.S. Counterterrorism Advisory Team for the Military Department of the South Carolina National Guard and serves as a member of the Boards of Advisors/Directors for the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, the Clarion Fund, the Institute of World Affairs, the Intelligence Analysis and Research program at her undergraduate alma mater, Notre Dame College of Ohio, and United West. She has been a Visiting Researcher and guest lecturer on counterterrorism, national defense, and international relations at Georgetown University. Ms. Lopez is a regular contributor to print and broadcast media on subjects related to Iran and the Middle East and the co-author of two published books on Iran. She is the author of an acclaimed paper for the Center, The Rise of the Iran Lobby and co-author/editor of the Center’s Team B II study, “Shariah: The Threat to America”.

Ms. Lopez received a B.A. in Communications and French from Notre Dame College of Ohio and an M.A. in International Relations from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She completed Marine Corps Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Quantico, Virginia before declining a commission, in favor of joining the CIA.

So these are the credentials of the woman who was fired for writing favorably about a book that someone else disapproves of. A scholar of her quality and expertise had to be suppressed, not just by having her article pulled, but by losing her status as a senior fellow.

Well…

Gatestone is a private foundation. It is fully within its rights to exercise editorial discretion and terminate any of its fellows as it sees fit. Front Page Magazine may also claim the same prerogatives vis-à-vis its own articles.

Still, one cannot help but observe the sheer juvenility of such behavior. These people are intelligent, well-educated adults — what prompts their descent into junior-high style bullying? Not just incompetence, but maliciousness. What’s going on here?

The impulse to suppress what someone else has to say, using any and all tactics available, is a totalitarian one.

The ferocious personal attacks on Diana West emerged from numerous quarters at more or less the same time, which suggested a concerted effort to apply Saul Alinsky’s Rule #12 — referred to in another context as “the politics of personal destruction”.

It seems that no matter how far to the “right” an old Stalinist moves, he still carries his own private Lubyanka around with him, ready to be dusted off and reoccupied whenever the occasion warrants.

# # #

Of Malice and Memory Holes

By Edward Cline

The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism

September 08, 2013

There is a purge afoot, not at the behest of the Left or the White House, or at the Huffington Post or Salon, but in the ranks of "conservatives" and "neo-conservatives." The purge, instigated by the Neocon editors of FrontPage Magazine, is designed to discredit and smear Diana West and her book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character, and to claim any collateral damage in the meantime. I have written on this purge in my August 8th column, "FrontPage's Spitballs Strike Diana West," and also reviewed her book. It is the Neocons who are sniping at West and anyone who defends her. I will not repeat everything I wrote in the "Spitball" column, except this:

But, then, we are dealing with Neocons here. Neoconservativism is simply a smorgasbord of supposedly "right-wing" ideologies populated largely by former communists, retired radical left-wing activists, cringing liberals, and even ex-SDS members such as Radosh. It is as philosophically rudderless as traditional "right-wing" Republican philosophy (provided anyone can find it). As a movement, it is so open-ended it may as well admit Barack Obama and all three Clintons as honorary members. Neoconservatism can accommodate just about every ideology but Islam.

And to judge by the way FrontPage's leading editors are conducting the smear campaign, it's not beyond fantasy that they could also accommodate totalitarian Islam. Islam is against everything, too. FrontPage may as well run ads on Al Jazeera TV. Perhaps the editors could also pen a series of defenses of Walter Duranty, the New York Times writer who helped to whitewash Stalin's (and Lenin's) skull-crushing, famine-as-policy régime.

On a dramatic note, the campaign against West brought to mind Milan Stitt's 1976 play, The Runner Stumbles, in which an attractive nun is murdered by a Catholic convert, because she was too tempting to the parish priest.

The chief problem with Neocons is that while they are against Islam and make token noises about their opposition to "big government," they are not for anything. This partly explains why the Neocons are fulminating against West. West, after all, is for the truth about the U.S.'s role in aiding and abetting, by design or by default, the perpetuation and arming of the Soviet Union. She is for revealing the depths and scope of the Big Con, a con which is reflected in academia and in the history of WWII found in most standard textbooks and read by most living Americans in their formative years. That con has been established dogma and narrative, and that dogma and narrative originated with FDR and his administration.

Woe to those who depart from it or challenge it.

West's compellingly demonstrated and amply documented thesis swims against the current of standard history, which is that FDR cut cards with a very personable devil (Josef Stalin) in order to crush Nazism and Hitler, and that it wasn't his fault or that of his cronies, dupes, and advisors (chiefly Harry Hopkins) that Stalin got atomic bomb materials and know-how and helped to replace Hitler's murderous totalitarianism in Europe with the Soviet Union's after the war.

The standard history is that it just "happened." No fingers should be pointed at St. Franklin, because up to a point, Stalin was viewed as just a benevolent despot looking out for "his people." That is how Stalin was sold to Americans during WWII in propaganda. After it was "revealed" that the U.S. was ignorant of Stalin's responsibility for the murders of millions of Russians in a concerted campaign to eliminate all opposition to the Soviet régime, and that it really, really was the totalitarian horror that others had described, the standard history is that the U.S. could only adopt an Alfred E. Neuman-like "What-Me-Know??" stance.

West and her book have been defended by Andrew Bostom, Michael McCann and Shari Goodman, among others. The contemptible behavior of FrontPage's editors has been noted and highlighted by Family Security Matters, Breitbart, and Gates of Vienna. West has published the first part of a lengthy and detailed rebuttal (not on FrontPage, of course) here.

I mentioned collateral damage. On September 3rd The Gatestone Institute published an article by Clare Lopez, "Recognizing the Wrong People," in which she cites Diana West's book and focuses on what moved West to write it, the baffling accommodation by especially the Obama administration of hiring Muslims into the most sensitive realms of policy and in indiscriminately patronizing the Muslim Brotherhood. Lopez discusses the distinct and observable parallel between that and FDR's accommodation of the Soviet Union with its formal recognition in 1933 and its consequences.

Without warning or explanation, that article was removed by Gatestone the very same day. The next day Lopez was removed from Gatestone's stable of writers and researchers. Shall we say expelled or purged? Qua terms, there's not much difference in the motive or the consequence. The Gates of Vienna relates the sequence of events.

In late August 2013, Clare Lopez, then a Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, submitted an article for publication at the Gatestone Institute’s website. It was entitled “Recognizing the Wrong People”, and drew on the U.S. government’s 1933 formal diplomatic recognition of the USSR as described in Diana West’s book American Betrayal to form an analogy with the U.S.’s present day recognition and/or support of other fundamentally-anti-American entities, such as the AQ/MB-dominated rebel and opposition forces in places like Egypt, Libya, and Syria….

…The article was duly published the morning of Tuesday 3 September 2013 at Gatestone and was sent out to an email list of subscribers. Sometime shortly after that, however, it was pulled from the website, with no notice or explanation.

…The real shock came the following morning, though, on September 4, when Ms. Lopez received an email from Nina Rosenwald notifying her that her relationship with the Gatestone Institute had been terminated at the request of the Gatestone Board of Directors. On September 5, Ms. Rosenwald confirmed in an email sent to Ms. Lopez and others what some had already suspected, that her firing was due to her “choice of books to promote…,” a clear reference to Ms. Lopez’ citation of historical events from Ms. West’s book….

Gatestone's removal of Clare Lopez's further association comports neatly with FrontPage's designation of West's book as a product of "incompetence." However, see Lopez's exemplary bona fides, still up on Gatestone's website (unless by now her page has been removed, as well, in that happy Big Brotherish tradition of designating certain individuals as non-persons).

Clearly, to Gatestone, Lopez's credentials (not to mention West's to FrontPage) are irrelevant in the light of her having made an important, just, and favorable mention of West's book. She must be vaporized and all record of her erased from the official gazette of Neoconservatism. She never happened. Was Clare Lopez one of Gatestone's stellar writers? Who? Blank out.

Here is one of the offending paragraphs from "Recognizing the Wrong People." Writing about the suicidal aid we have been giving not only the Muslim Brotherhood, but now, it is slowing coming out, to the Syrian "rebels" who are but a known tool of Al-Qa'eda, Lopez asks:

To what can such a perversion of reason and reality, of common sense, of any measure of American self-interest be attributed: Poole's Brotherhood penetration of the U.S. foreign policy cadre? More wishful thinking? The illogic of an upside down world view and America's place in it? Or the pernicious persistence of that first betrayal, the U.S.'s 1933 recognition of Stalin's murderous gulag of a regime?

Lopez, together with Diana West, wants to know why we are aiding our enemies. It is indeed a baffling phenomenon. I offer my own explanation of that "pernicious persistence": the liberals, the Progressives, the Democrats, and anyone else who believes that force justifies the ends, are totalitarians in mind, in heart, in essence. That describes especially Barack Hussein Obama.

As for the Neocons, it is about time that we include the smarmy and righteous thought police of FrontPage and Gatestone.

# # #

An Army of Kooks

By Ned May

Gates of Vienna

September 8, 2013

The controversy over Diana West’s book American Betrayal has gotten ugly, and it’s bound to get uglier still.

When someone stakes out such an irrational and malicious position, and then doubles down when called on it, there’s no way out without an immense loss of face. A Chernobyl-type meltdown is now underway, and radioactivity from the disaster will dust a lot of people before all this is over.

If you’re sick this story — and I’m pretty sick of it myself — you can skip this post and go read about President Obama or Miley Cyrus or something. But a recent exchange at FrontPage Magazine drew my attention, and it deserves at least a mention here.

Yesterday Mr. Horowitz published a response to Diana West’s rebuttal of Ronald Radosh. It appeared first at Breitbart, and was mirrored soon afterwards at FPM, where the comments have become… ahem… rather heated.

In the comment thread, one “ziggy zoggy” said, inter alia: “Andrew Bostom, you Westrolls are worse than Paulbots… You need to take of [sic] your tinfoil hat. It’s baked your brain like a potato.” That gives you an idea of the level to which public discourse has descended at FPM.

In response to Mr. Zoggy, David Horowitz, the editor of the whole shebang, said (words and phrases of interest have been marked in [bold] for further attention):

Thank you Ziggy Zoggy. I haven’t the foggiest idea who this Lopez woman is, I haven’t communicated with Nina Rosenwald in six months, I am not familiar with Gatestone, and I am not the aggressor in all this. The victim lady is. She attacked me as a totalitarian for removing a review that made at seem as though Frontpage was endorsing a preposterous book. Then she organized a kook army of which Bostom is a prime member to attack me as a closet communist. She is incapable of rebutting any of the criticisms made of her book first of all because the criticisms are sound, secondly because they are over her head, and thirdly because she has invested all her energy in concocting a conspiracy theory to explain her critics instead of attempting to answer them.

Before I analyze the text, did anyone else besides me notice how much this screed sounds like Charles Johnson? Adapted for the appropriate context, it could have been written by the Grand Lizardoid himself back in 2007 or 2008 in the comments at Little Green Footballs.

The stylistic resemblance is unmistakable. It’s uncanny… and creepy.

Now let’s take a look at some of those interesting terms. I’ve rearranged the order of the items for the purposes of this discussion:

- Victim lady. Well, this is a winner: condescension, with a whiff of sexism. Any of you girls want to weigh in on this one?

- Over her head. Yup. That’s what you’d expect from a girl with no credentials as a historian. “Well, sir, little lady, don’t you worry your pretty li’l head none about them Commies. That’s men’s work; we’ll take care of it.”

- Preposterous book. If Ms. West had written that Stalin and FDR were space aliens, I could agree with the adjective “preposterous”. But a well-sourced, sober analysis of the evidence hardly deserves such an epithet, no matter how much one disagrees with her conclusions.

- Incapable of rebutting any of the criticisms. Actually, I’ve read sixteen thousand words of very effective rebuttal over the past two days. Does none of that count? “I’m the editor of FrontPage Magazine. We don’t need no steenkin’ evidence.”

- Instead of attempting to answer them. Ditto the above. I’ve read plenty of detailed answers. Perhaps the answers are not to Mr. Horowitz’ liking…?

- Concocting a conspiracy theory. Can you say “projection”? Because, in the very same paragraph, he asserts that Ms. West, with her extraordinary influence and charisma, has

- Organized a kook army. Yup. All those kooks out there, paid to do battle with the beleaguered courageous truth-tellers at FPM. Uh-huh. Right.

Actually, I kind of like the idea of being in the Kook Army. I’m tired of being a Kook of One.

But I must emphasize that I am neither a mercenary nor a draftee in this army. I volunteered for service. I joined up enthusiastically, ready with my scorching keyboard to do battle in whatever mosquito-infested backwater they send me to.

We’ve been an Army of Midgets in the past. There’s no reason why we can’t be an army of all epithets.

Welcome to the Army of Kooks!

# # #

Memo to David Horowitz and Ron Radosh

By Ruth King

Ruthfully Yours

September 9th, 2013

There seems to be no end to David Horowitz’s bile. Today he responds to Diana West’s rebuttal [here].

Discussing removal of Mark Tapson’s positive review he claims ….”(I did not suppress the Frontpage review as she falsely claims, but allowed it to appear elsewhere).” Huh?

The only place it appears in its entirety is on my blog:

I have no benefactors and no advertisers so I can and do post anything I like without his permission. In fact I post daily columns from Frontpage by David Hornik, Daniel Greenfield, Jamie Glazov, Bruce Bawer, Bruce Thornton, David Solway….all my favorite writers without his permission. I also posted David Solway’s brilliant and measured take on the entire brouhaha, (Disagreement Among Conservatives) which Frontpage refused to post. To their credit, Family Security Matters also posted it.

Furthermore I did not ask his permission to post Edward Cline’s brilliant review of West’s book nor his report of the controversy “Frontpage’s Spitball Strike Diana West” both of which were originally published at Family Security Matters.

Frontpage scrubbed Mark Tapson’s review of Diana West, claiming that Mark Tapson was poorly informed about the issues raised in “American Betrayal.” Why then, did they keep Mark Tapson’s review of Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government by M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein (May 14, 2013) ???

In it Tapson asserts that the authors show “that widespread government infiltration by Soviet spies sabotaged our foreign policy and molded the post-WWII world in favor of the Soviet Union.” Perhaps, it was the death of the esteemed Herbert Romerstain which inhibited Ron Radosh and the editors at Frontpage.

Horowitz writes “Radosh and I have collectively spent 50 years writing several million words and nearly twenty books attacking the liberal consensus, and exposing the anti-American agendas of radicals and Communists, specifically those who infiltrated and finally took over academia.” He cunningly uses the word “collectively” meaning 25 years each. In fact, they had their so called “awakening” in 1987…a tad late.

Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. What took them so long? By then all the neoconservatives agreed that the Communist regimes of China and the Soviet Union were evil and genocidal.

Horowitz and Radosh were, by their own admission, Marxists who carried their useful idiocy into the anti Vietnam War movement. And, they remained Marxists in spite of the revelations of the murderous acts and intentions of Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh and Castro. They remained Marxists even when Robert Conquest, the brilliant historian, poet and essayist published The Great Terror – in 1968 detailing Stalin’s purges and brutality. They remained Marxists when Czechoslovakia was invaded in 1968. They remained Marxists when Horowitz became editor of Ramparts magazine and in his own words he was eager “to divulge the secrets of America’s electronic intelligence agency to the world. We viewed it as an effort to level the military playing field so that America would no longer be the superpower that was able to lord it over everyone else.”

Ron Radosh cavorted with Students for a Democratic Society and assorted thugs and terrorists. In 1967 shortly before joining SDS he opined on Norman Thomas who died in 1967. “Thomas’ chief sin, in my view, was to have written that he did not, “regard Vietcong terrorism as virtuous.” He was guilty of attacking the heroic Vietnamese people, instead of the United States, which was the enemy of the world’s people.”

In the spring of 1985, however, Horowitz and Peter Collier wrote a column “Goodbye to all That” explaining their decision to abandon radical left politics and vote for Ronald Reagan!! Gasp! That “courageous” stand was taken four years after America elected Ronald Reagan by a landslide.

Since his very late “awakening” David Horowitz has done some great work. His pamphlet “Why Israel Is The Victim” is the best I have read on the subject, and he is one of the most articulate defenders of Israel.

It is, therefore, inexplicable that he has turned so viciously and obsessively against Diana West. It is also inexplicable that he continues to distort the contents of her cogently written, trail-blazing book while continuing to throw mud on anyone who finds its well-documented arguments of merit.

And, I must add, it is perhaps even more inexplicable to me that no “A”-team pundits have stepped up to oppose this Alinskyite campaign of personal destruction against Diana West. While it is easy to wax eloquent about the importance of freedom of speech in the abstract; where are the big guns now that our public square has become a dangerous place for unconventional thinking and new ideas that threaten notions of the status quo?

Ronald Radosh was and remains a cad. What propels his unvarnished hatred and will to libel and defame Diana West? M. Stanton Evans, who appears on the cover of American Betrayal with a rousing endorsement of the book gave Radosh a royal verbal thrashing which the redoubtable Ann Coulter kept, and I posted it [here].

(Without the permission of David Horowitz)

Can it be that Radosh is still smarting from that brilliant evisceration? And, the criticism of his review did not let up. Accuracy in Academia’s Malcolm Kline had this to say: “In a recent critique of Blacklisted By History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies that appeared in National Review, historian Ron Radosh makes numerous assertions about the book by M. Stanton Evans that are completely unsupported by the work itself. Unlike Radosh, all of us read the book.”

And, Ann Coulter added this about the Radosh review of the book: “Radosh makes misstatements of fact about the book, misstates facts about the cases and falsely accuses Evans of plagiarism. Other than that, it’s a good review!” She adds: “Radosh knows less about McCarthy than I know about fly-fishing. He gets cases wrong, sources wrong, hearings wrong. He’s been pulling this nonsense for 25 years now.”

In his book “ Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left” (June 15, 2002) he discloses the essential and formerly classified fact that his second marriage ”rehabilitated the sexual self-esteem that my former wife had crushed.” Well, thanks for sharing, Ron. I’m glad your mojo in the bedroom is back because on Islam you consistently hide under the bed.

Incidentally, just about every sentient person in America knew the Rosenbergs were guilty long before his opus minimus was published in 1983.

At the end of that book he makes the risible claim:

“The country is stronger for having encountered and withstood us.”

Memo to Ron: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

# # #

Too Much Schnapps

By Takuan Seiyo

Gates of Vienna

September 12, 2013

Taking the controversy over Diana West’s book as his jumping-off point, Takuan Seiyo discusses our occluded history — not to mention our occluded present.

On instinctive shooting

One would have to be a pierced slacker or in a sensory deprivation tank to not take notice of the storm that erupted on the Left and the neoconservative semi-Right after the publication of Diana West’s American Betrayal. Citing Ms. West’s own early stock of her detractors’ forays, the most serious was Ronald Radosh’s 7000-word “McCarthy On Steroids” plus follow-up pieces — FrontPage’s own inventory is here — with echoes in Pajamas Media, The Ameran Thinker, National Review and undoubtedly elsewhere, prodigiously.

My own favorite is Mother Jones’s “The Latest One-Upmanship on the Lunatic Right”, parsimonious in that it quotes generously from Andrew Sullivan’s critique of the book and its author. In a country where an Andrew Sullivan gets so much paid column inch space and bandwidth, one is in a Looking Glass world, an upside-down mishmash, so maybe even David Frum will soon inveigh with his conservative opinion in a syndicated column.

Horowitz, Radosh and Black are the only weighty names in the critics’ gallery, though I’ll omit Conrad Black from further consideration. His “Right-wing loopy who has [not been] house-trained” is so embarrassing for a man I came to expect more from that I wish he were back to tending his collections of cars, antiques and (reportedly $9-million-worth of) Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorabilia, instead of voicing strong opinions on the événements du jour.

I have not read American Betrayal, though I will as soon as time allows. I am also not a Sovietologist or specialist in modern American history — but I need not be. Having been born behind the Iron Curtain, I, my people, my family — those remaining by 1941 after Katyn, Kolyma, Kazakhstan, and the rest later, after Majdanek, Janowska and Belzec — have lived and endlessly argued the consequences of the history revisited by Diana West and so eagerly reburied by her detractors. I will, however, mostly stay clear of the fine points argued by both sides in the controversy, noting only that in its broad outline, which I know having read the reviews and the polemics between Diana West and her detractors, and bringing my store of information to bear, I side fully with Ms. West’s contentions even if, as her critics allege, one or another detail she discusses it erroneous.

What Messrs. Radosh, Horowitz et al. are doing is akin to a learned historian of the Spanish monarchy looking at Velazquez’s “Las Meninas” and foaming at the mouth: “What kind of dog is that? No such rough-looking mutts would have been allowed anywhere within the precincts of the Royal Palace! And what’s that coffered door on the back wall! This style had all but disappeared by the time Velazquez arrived in Madrid. What ignorance! What chutzpah! How could this pushy parvenu from Seville have purported to represent faithfully the fauna or the architecture of the Spanish Habsburg Court!”

But this tells more about the critic than the painter, for “Las Meninas” would remain one of the iconic paintings of our civilization even if that dog should have been a Pomeranian and the door should have been inlaid marquetry. In other words, the vehemence of Diana West’s detractors would be grossly out of proportion even if their allegations of error in fact or methodology were correct. Their failure to acknowledge the singular merit and critical timeliness of American Betrayal’s larger theme is highly troubling, in particular because of the urgency of her insight as to the parallel to the current infiltration of Muslims and Islam’s Useful Idiots in the halls of American power.

But the question remains: why the vitriol? Why would a smart, well informed, experienced, effective defender of what’s left of the United States, Clare Lopez, be dismissed from Gatestone Institute after having written a favorable review of Ms. West’s book? Diana West asked the “why” question in the context of quoting this phrase from her book:

“Once we finally incorporate the facts of Soviet-directed penetration of the U.S. government — the Communist-agent-occupation of the U.S. government — which began in earnest in 1933, everything we know about ourselves as a nation will also have to rearrange itself, our history taking on a brand-new pattern of revelation . . .”

Why should critics acknowledged as foes of Communism and, in the case of both FrontPage and Gatestone, also important members in the anti-Islamization coalition, be so disturbed by this “new pattern of revelation”?

Here I have to reveal my other qualification for entering this debate. For when Messrs. Horowitz and Radosh were still on the barricades of the Proletariat, I was learning both my English and my points of the political compass from the writings of William F. Buckley. And Bill Buckley had started his public career as a pioneer, fearless fighter standing athwart the March of the Left and yelling “Stop,” but would end it peeing habitually from the open door of his moving limo onto downwind traffic. He would pee metaphorically too: onto conservative writers still toiling in the topical fields of reality that he had by then found inconvenient to his social ambitions.

Once upon a time, Buckley wrote copiously and courageously on the subject of Commie infiltration, in defense of Joe McCarthy, in defense of Chamberlain and against Hiss, in scathing rebuttals of the Rosenberg denialists and other red-diaper intellectuals, in praise of various positions of the John Birch Society, and so on. He allowed race-realist and immigration — realist articles in National Review. But slowly, “the Pope of the conservative movement” started turning. First, he turned on the John Birch Society.

In March 2008, Buckley published an article entitled “Goldwater, the John Birch Society, and Me” in Commentary, of all possible venues, the premier organ of Jewish neoconservatism. In it, Buckley described why and how a group of conservative thinkers and machers, including himself, came to ditch the John Birch Society (JBS) in 1962. The trigger was their shared opinion that JBS founder Robert Welch was a man disconnected from reality, having written a book, “The Politician,” alleging that President Eisenhower had been a Communist agent.

National Review would be pivotal in the excommunication of the Birchers, starting with a 5000-word opinion piece Buckley wrote and published a week after that meeting. “The wound we Palm Beach plotters delivered to the John Birch Society proved fatal over time,” gloats Buckley at the end of his Commentary reminiscence.

Robert Welch may have gone overboard in his choice of words, but not in the sense of his allegations. For FDR, Truman and Eisenhower too may have been unwitting Communist tools, but tools they were. That alone, revived and refreshed in Diana West’s book, is a red cape in front of the neocons — and few conservatives remain in America who aren’t — for it’s linked to an old anathema already branded and excommunicated half a century ago.

Moreover, as much as it was clear that Welch had gone hyperbolic in some of his sweeping accusations, his paranoia was justified then and has been vindicated by history since. He was one the first to attack Fidel Castro and his regime, already in 1959. He was perhaps the first to expose the United Nations for the Third-World run, global socialist government vehicle that it has plainly by now become[1]. He exposed odious conduct by U.S. presidents that looked like they were doing the Soviets’ dirty work. Among others, ‘Welch’s book about Eisenhower and the forces controlling American politics, relays, per the JBS précis, “300 pages and 150 pages of footnotes and documentation, including covering one of Mr. Eisenhower’s most immoral and despicable acts of authorizing ‘Operation Keelhaul’; which used American soldiers to repatriate anti-communist Poles to their certain death or torture.”

Polish history as the insufficiently known, unacknowledged and unwanted depository of much evidence of base, traitorous, Commie-manipulated conduct by the wartime leaders of the United States and Great Britain will feature prominently in this little review, for like Ms. West’s disclosures, it’s another skeleton that people with agendas wish to leave buried. But thus far in my defense of Welch, even neocons would probably not object too much, looking in hindsight. One would have to be brain-dead or snatched by alien spores from space not to notice that the now-thwarted causes Welch advocated already in the 1950s: limited government, individual liberty, the rule of law and restoration of the Republic as envisioned by the Founding Fathers are the causes that the entire conservative movement should have embraced and sustained from the beginning. Instead, they focused only on fighting formal Communism (but not the stealthy one), furthering capitalism, and continuing to play ball on a pitch whose goal posts were being continuously moved leftward without a pip of protest from the away team.

I believe that the herem (haram in Arabic) imposed on the John Birch Society by the “conservative movement” to this day may be due to its five decades of still-continuing rejection and opposition to two sacred American totems: “Civil Rights” and “Immigration.” That these two totems and other lesser ones are the work of a secondary infection of the polity by Communist agents either professional or instinctively sympathetic — what I call yin or estrogen-driven — is a separate subject that cannot be treated here[2]. But by 2013, when “Civil Rights” have for decades morphed into Equal Outcomes despoliation and hateful truculence, and “Immigration” has morphed into a disjoining compound injected by the tens of millions of units into the arthritic joints of a hobbled nation, these should not be controversial issues any more.

But still they are, and they are neocon anathema.

I don’t have a ready definition of neoconservatism myself, but like Potter Stewart with pornography, I know it when I see it. It’s not even useful to distinguish between “conservative” and “neoconservative” anymore, for the latter has subsumed the former, including the Republican Party. And it’s clear that the institutions and individuals on the Right who are attacking American Betrayal exhibit a particularly “conservative” set of values, proclivities and practices, the derision quote marks warranted by some idiosyncrasies that have nothing to do with genuine conservatism. In Samuel Francis’s words, “Despite their dislike of the New Left, their anti-communism, and their concern about destructive cultural and moral trends, the neo-conservatives for the most part never quite managed to break completely with many of the underlying liberal assumptions.”[3] Paul Gottfried, a prolific historian of conservatism and a fierce critic of conservatism-light has characterized this syndrome as “sentimentally drawn to the left despite conservative positions on many policy issues.”

Gottfried attributes this ambivalence to the cultural differences between the neoconservatives and the old right. In his words, “Both groups come largely from self-contained cultures that once confronted each other across an abyss of mutual suspicion: the one, Eastern urban-Jewish and the other, American heartland-Protestant.”[4]

To list the sieve layers in my own filter wherein “conservatives” with derision quotes are identified:

- Support for “social justice” and the welfare state.

- Fondness for Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

- Support for immigration in all its forms

- Extreme sensitivity to “racism” and omerta with respect to race and gender group genetic differences.

- Unequivocal advocacy of democracy and of interventionist foreign policy to enforce it, particularly in the Middle East.

- Fondness for abstract universalist principles (James Burnham referred to the latter as compassion, kindliness, love and brotherhood instead of what a true conservative ought to advocate: civic virtues).

- Scorched-earth tactics against conservative ideological opponents such as Paul Gottfried, Pat Buchanan, Samuel Francis, John Birch Society etc. And now Diana West, though she was not aware that in the eyes of “conservatives” she had just written herself into that camp.

And two characteristics that, sadly, both sides involved in the American Betrayal brouhaha, including this reviewer, share:

- Awareness of and activism against Islamization.

- Strong support for Israel.

Let it be said that the presence of the last two items in the neoconservative agenda and their conspicuous lack in the paleoconservative one is, in my eyes, a credit to the former and a black eye to the latter. Still, even with the black eye, that visage looks truer to me.

American Betrayal revolves around a John-Birchey “extreme-right” theme. And JBS is not only tainted by some unfortunate choices of words and tackling of tribal taboos; it’s also uncool. Bob Dylan wrote a song mocking it. Norman Lear made a film mocking it. Stanley Kubrick mocked it in Dr. Strangelove. In other words, the liberals who dictate the terms of the discourse don’t like it.

Ms. West had ventured into taboo territory. She had to be shot down. Before her, Lawrence Auster had been. His supremely reasoned and reasonable arguments against racial preferences, about black criminality and white cowardice, about the crippling dysfunctions planted intentionally through Third World immigration got him banished from FrontPageMagazine’s pages, for “racism.” Before Auster it was Gottfried who had been picked, frozen, personalized and polarized — by the entire “conservative” establishment.

William Buckley himself went down this path much beyond his vendetta against the Birchers. He transformed into a neocon during the Reagan years, for that’s where the power, money and perks lay. Soon purges started at National Review, with the firing of all writers and editors who’d taken “controversial” positions with regard to “sensitive” subjects. John O’Sullivan, Rick Brookhiser, Peter Brimelow and others were let go.

An instinctive “off with her head” is what I think the neoconservative reaction has been with respect to Ms. West’s book, too. But let’s look at the substance of the criticism, not just its springboard.

What we know we know and what we don’t know but need not prove

The gist of the critiques is that Diana’s West’s book is too much: an overreach mixing personal bias with incorrectly interpreted facts, as allege none too politely Messrs. Radosh et al. To this is added a self-serving contempt of the “expert,” e.g. Radosh is a “professional” historian with a PhD, and West is not, and Horowitz cited that expertise as his main reason for siding with its position.

Having completed the coursework for a PhD in a pre-Affirmative Action top shelf American university, and a Masters at another, I have come by my contempt for such contempt the hard way. Tocqueville had a couple of years of college and some law courses as his preparation for writing “Democracy in America.” Patrick Leigh Fermor — the most erudite travel writer and history savant who has ever put pen to paper — had only had a high school education, albeit in the days when high schools were for real. Epictetus earned his diplomas in philosophy from his slave insignia and crippled leg.

Even if some details of West’s vast painting of Communist infiltration of Washington’s power structure could stand correction, the tableau is not, cannot be, vast enough. For instance, a big part of the Radosh critique evolves around the assertion that FDR’s closest and most trusted advisor Harry Hopkins was not a Soviet agent like Diana West alleges; someone else was. He cites sources I am not familiar with, and so does she. I cannot decide who is right — but it matters so very little. What matters is that Hopkins might as well have been a KGB agent for all the stupendous commie-friendly damage he has wrought. And Ms. West amply and irrefutably makes that case, whatever formal label might apply.

If that is not shocking enough, warranting a moment of national silence and reflection even if Hopkins did not carry a KGB identity card, our survival instincts have been dulled. On purpose?

Professor Radosh’s objections remind me of the PC contortions in the U.S. and Great Britain to avoid “labeling” Muslim terrorists as Muslim terrorists. Apparently, one must have a rag wrapped around one’s head and a discful of emails from Bin Laden to be considered as a Muslim terrorist. If you wear a United States Army officer’s uniform and murder 13 American soldiers and wound 30 while screaming Allahu Akbar, that is only “workplace violence.”

But it’s Islam itself where the terrorism lies, with or without Al Qaeda. Just as nihilism, subversion and destruction lie in Marx/Engels/Lenin & Co, per se, with or without the KGB. And so Ms. West was on the correct track when having noticed the number of Muslims in high public positions swaying American policy, she had a déjà vu concerning the high number of Communists in earlier administrations.

It’s the extent of Communist infiltration that matters, not the exact relationship between the infiltrators and the ideology and organizations on behalf of which they were infiltrating. The scorn wrapped in defining Diana West as McCarthyist is risible when we now know that Communist infiltration was as wide and deep then as McCarthy alleged, and not as narrow as his Useful Idiot detractors have claimed ever since. Moreover, this infiltration remains all-important and destiny-shaping now, though mutated like a smart flu virus into Cultural Marxism riding piggyback on submerged Leninism.

But let’s revisit briefly the vast picture of the World War II Alliance, to understand why as detailed and scathing an expose as American Betrayal is, it’s not enough and cannot be, for no one book could contain all the horror, and minds would reel from contemplating the abyss then, just as they should reel when contemplating the abyss-in-progress now.

Class, raise your hands: how many have heard the name Władysław Sikorski? Poland had a quarter million men fighting in the Allied forces, often with great distinction (e.g. Squadron 303, Monte Casino, Narvik etc.). General Sikorski was their Supreme Commander and Prime Minister of the Polish Government in Exile, headquartered in London. He died on July 4, 1943, when the Liberator plane carrying him, his daughter and his staff plunged into the Mediterranean right after taking off from the British airfield in Gibraltar. A British Court of Inquiry decreed three days later that jammed elevator controls caused the crash but it was impossible to establish how this jamming occurred — except that it certainly was no sabotage (this and the reference are cited in Wikipedia’s entry on Sikorski, but I relied on Polish sources).

“Impossible to determine” yet possible enough to determine that there was no sabotage? In contrast, the unofficial and non-British explanations of Sikorski’s death differ only with respect to who ordered the hit and exactly how it was executed. Perhaps the most credible theory is that Sikorski’s plane was sabotaged by the KGB with full knowledge or at least a wink and a nod of the highest echelons of British government, perhaps even Churchill himself. The more radical version of this scenario has been presented in Rolf Hochhuth’s 1967 play “Soldaten.” He based it on personal revelations from Jane Ledig-Rowohlt, the wife of his publisher, who had worked during the war in the British Secret Service and knew Churchill personally.

Now what would Messrs. Radosh et al. comment if I wrote a book alleging based on such anecdotal and additional circumstantial evidence that Winston Churchill was complicit in the murder of General Sikorski? Maybe this would have been an irresponsible allegation, tarnishing the reputation of an otherwise great man, as great as they come. But a critique based solely on vituperation with regard to a perhaps-erroneous assertion of Churchill’s involvement would have been a great disservice to the broader truth, and a gross impediment to our understanding of those times and their implications for us who live now.

First, even if Churchill had no knowledge of the hit on Sikorski, he appeased Stalin constantly, ignobly and unnecessarily — though less so than Roosevelt did. He went as far as impeding the release of information about the Soviet massacre in Katyn[5]: “We shall certainly rigorously oppose any “investigation” by the International Red Cross or any other body in any territory under German authority,” he wrote in a telegram to Uncle Joe.

Second, just as America was riddled at the top with Communist agents both official and spontaneously sympathizing, so was Great Britain — and that’s the more important truth. There is little doubt that Great Britain’s wartime decisions too were formed partly by such agents of Communist influence.

What we know about Sikorski’s last day is that when his Liberator was about to take off from Gibraltar en route to London, NKVD/KGB asset Kim Philby, OBE [sic!], had been Chief of the Iberia subsection of the British MI6 for two years already. Which means that this Cambridge lowlife, incidentally son of an upper class British convert to Islam and, true to type for a diehard commie, a vocal supporter of the Islamic cause in the Arab-Israeli conflicts, was in charge of all British counterintelligence operation in Gibraltar too, including the security of the airport. And on July 4, 1943, the plane of the Soviet Ambassador to Great Britain, Ivan Maisky, was at the Gibraltar Airport, parked rather close to Sikorski’s Liberator, with KGB operatives on board. Maisky had just been recalled to Moscow for a consultation with Uncle Joe concerning major trouble that had erupted between Sikorski’s government and the Soviets. Philby was in Gibraltar too[6]).

Just two months before Sikorski’s all-but-certain assassination, the Germans announced the discovery of 20,000 bodies (21,768 eventually) of Polish officers and inconvenient intelligentsia murdered by the Soviets and buried in Katyn Forest. The Soviets denied this but Sikorski rejected the denial and demanded an international investigation. The Soviets then accused the Polish government-in-exile of cooperating with Nazi Germany and broke off diplomatic relations.

Sikorski had become a major burr under the saddle on which rode the troika of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, for he had begun opposing such an alliance with the mega-murdering psychopath from Georgia. As to what the first two intended relative to Poland for the sake of appeasing Stalin may be inferred from their failure to invite a representative of the Polish government to the Teheran Conference. There, merely five months after Sikorski’s murder, Poland was preliminarily cast loose and abandoned to Uncle Joe’s tender ministrations. The two leaders of the free world also agreed that the Polish Government in Exile was not representing Poland anymore but a puppet Communist government would be set up in that country instead. The betrayal was formalized at the February 1945 Yalta Conference, again, without Polish participation.

e have here a murder motive nonpareil. To the question of cui bono, one can answer that World Communism and the USSR would benefit, and so would the Alliance per its two Western leaders who were so innocent of street smarts that they were unable to realize the Soviets needed them far more than they needed the Soviets, and who were being played by Stalin as if they were rubes from the provinces standing before a practiced con man in a downtown dive. But where were their advisors?

To the singular opportunity on July 4, 1943 — and Sikorski’s planes had experienced three “malfunctions” in the preceding 12 months — we can now add a powerful motive. Although not proven, speculation that KGB agents in coordination with Philby and Maisky sabotaged Sikorski’s plane is not only possible but warranted[7].

The main issue is not whether orders to wipe out Sikorski had been given in London or Moscow[8]. The issue is, first, that the British government has obstructed the possibility of finding that out by sealing its relevant records as a “military secret” until 2050 — why, one wonders. The second issue is whether it has been fully disclosed to what extent the administrations of both FDR and Churchill were shot through with KGB operatives and “mere” Soviet sympathizers acting as trusted advisors and double-agent executors of their respective countries’ war efforts.

Diana West has now treated the Roosevelt-Truman-Eisenhower case comprehensively. The British case still begs re-examination, for the “Cambridge Five” were surely neither just in Cambridge nor just five.

Two of Diana West’s most irritating (to her critics) assertions in American Betrayal is that the Allies were swayed by Soviet agents not to pursue early peace overtures from Germany, and to land in Normandy rather than in Italy. She describes this as “the most serious indictment of the US Communist movement for having spawned the traitors, fellow travelers and dupes who worked inside the federal government to advance Stalin’s interests.”

I will not quote from Professor Radosh’s critique of these points, as West already does so in her rebuttal, showing that he criticized mostly what she had not written. But I happened upon a chance confluence that supports Diana West’s thesis. Reading up on Ivan Maisky, the very Soviet ambassador in London whose co-presence with Philby and Sikorski in Gibraltar on July 4, 1943 is so hard to brush off, I had to circumvent his memoir, not being able to judge without much further study what was truthful and what was a whitewash. However, the Wikipedia entry on Ivan Maisky includes the following paragraph, supported by bibliographical references:

“During these years in London, he reassured Joseph Stalin that Britain had no interest in signing a separate peace with Germany while pressuring Britain to open a “second front” against the Germans in northern France. [5] He maintained close contact with Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden and personally visited the Foreign Office every day to get the latest news. [*]

Is it not clearer now that the invasion of the continent through France rather than Italy, and the rejection of peace overtures from Germany were done for the sake of Soviet interests and in an implicit surrender of Eastern Europe to Stalin?

Ms. West summarized the saboteurs’ work and the damage it has wrought in these words:

“They appear to have successfully thwarted multiple attempts by anti-Nazi, anti-Communist Germans to gain US assistance that might have helped them overthrow Hitler, surrender German armies to US and British forces in exchange for unspecified assistance in keeping the Red Army out of eastern and central Europe — a mission we spent the next four decades fighting to achieve from beleaguered bases in Western Europe. This might have brought World War II to a close much earlier than 1945. In other words, there was a chance not taken due to Communist penetration of the policy-making chain in Washington and London that might have saved millions, even tens of millions of lives. It is the story of these German Underground efforts that I discuss in Chapter 10, and the obstacles they faced in both Washington and London, where pro-Soviet influence — and Soviet influence operators and agents — were able to keep these anti-Nazi, anti-Communists at bay.”

West explains, correctly, as anyone who lived in an Iron Curtain Soviet satellite country knows, that Stalin’s goal was to take Europe. I have to modify that, for this had been the original Soviet goal since the days when Stalin was still a semi-anonymous commie commissar. The Bolsheviks had already attempted to conquer Europe once when they attacked the newly independent Polish Republic in 1919 -1921. Their plan was to flatten Poland and push on to Germany and beyond.

After a series of bloody battles, the decisive one was fought in August 13-25, 1920 in the environs of Warsaw. The Polish Army beat back the Soviets, and from then on the tide would turn against the invaders. The implications of the Polish victory for all of Europe was such that the British diplomat Edgar Vincent D’Abernon wrote a book with the title The eighteenth decisive battle of the world: Warsaw, 1920.

In his September 22, 1920 speech at the IX Conference of the Russian Communist Party, Lenin stated that “the centre of world imperialism’s entire system lies very close to [Warsaw].” By attacking it, though unsuccessfully, the USSR had been able to roil the working classes of Germany and Britain, he said, and had “a powerful effect on the revolutionary movement in Europe.” Lenin boasted that the attack on Poland was particularly successful in Great Britain, where it raised the proletariat to “an unprecedented level, to an absolutely new stage in the revolution.”

Lenin concluded with the words, “If we close our ranks and bend every effort, we shall win the victory.” Indeed, the ranks would be closed, the ears of Roosevelt and Churchill would be bent accordingly, and the Soviets won the victory — in 1943. Is this not just one of the issues wrathful avengers of “the truth” should chew on in quiet contemplation instead of excoriating Diana West on account that it was not Bupkin who said something to Zupkin but Zupkin who said it to Bupkin?

Schnapps

As I put the finishing touches on this on Sept 11, we, the happy few, celebrate the 330th anniversary of the Battle of Vienna. By the way, here is a subject for a great PhD dissertation in Education, Sociology, Contemporary History or Islamic Studies: Are high schools in the West (i.e. anywhere from Germany going west all the way to New Zealand) still teaching about Vienna 1683, and if so, what is it they are teaching? Hypothesis to be disproved: they are not teaching it, those that do teach it do so from the Turks’ point of view, and this tendency has a statistically significant correlation with each country’s weighted quotient of officially sanctioned Cultural Marxism.

Now, what do you think the chances are that such a dissertation would be approved, even if pared down to a more manageable single country, say Germany, or even a single zone in that country, say Lower Saxony? Academia is the very hatchery of Cultural Marxism; its desire to allow a critical investigation of its main raison d’être is very small.

By the way, since the term “Cultural Marxism” is flung about prodigiously, anchoring it to a definition is useful. As good as any is this one in David Horowitz’s invaluable DiscovertheNetworks guide to the Political Left. Which brings me to the sad issue of David Horowitz’s infantry and PJ Media’s dragoons and Gatestone Institute’s artillery firing on their own troops on the Anti-Islamization front. Particularly Horowitz, as so much of what he does is so good and important.

It’s another battle involving the Austrians and the Turks that’s relevant here: the Battle of Karansebes, whose 225th anniversary will be on September 17.

The instigator was Austria’s Emperor Joseph II (the full list of his domains and titles is too long). Joseph II — Mozart’s patron and Marie Antoinette’s brother — was a decent but not very bright man who hatched various liberty-promoting ideas but lacked the competence to implement them. Among those was his initiative to rid the Balkans of the cruel Turk occupier.

Joseph II personally led a large imperial army deep into Turkish-occupied territory, even though he had no knowledge of the military craft and had no bench of competent generals. The full tale of woes is too long for our purpose here, but let it suffice that when Joseph II finally parked his quarter-million troops and a corresponding number of horses and artillery pieces, to prepare for an engagement, it was in a swampy area by the Danube River near the town of Karansebes (present day Romania) that he parked them. Again, we shall skip the intervening troubles such as (by some reckoning) over 150,000 soldiers falling ill with malaria and dysentery, overstretched supply lines and so on.

On the fateful day, a scout unit of the Austrian hussars crossed the river to look for signs of an incoming Turkish army. They found no Turks but did find Gypsies who had schnapps for sale. The opportunity was too good to pass up.

When an infantry unit showed up much later looking for the hussars, they found their comrades drunk and happy. Naturally, the foot soldiers wanted some of the good stuff too. The problem was that by then the schnapps was running low. Arguments broke out that soon evolved into a shooting skirmish. It was pitch dark, with perhaps a Gypsy bonfire for illumination.

Then some foot soldier had the clever idea to shout “The Turks!” “The Turks!” so that the other guys would flee and he and his buddies would enjoy the remaining schnapps all to themselves. Unfortunately, a general panic ensued.

Austrian officers seeing this started shouting “Halt,” Halt,” but this was a truly multicultural army, and units of Hungarians, Slavs and Italians didn’t know German very well. So the soldiers thought they were hearing “Allah!” “Allah!” and rode and ran harder back toward the main camp. By then, the camp was waking to thundering hooves, shots, screams of “Allah” and “The Turks are coming!” The encamped units started firing on their own who were trying to re-enter the camp. Then the horses and cattle got so frightened they smashed their enclosures and fled by the tens of thousands, augmenting the aural impression of a large number of Allah’s cavalry attacking.

General pandemonium ensued. What was supposed to be a battle of the Austrians against the Turks, ended up with the Austrian Army fighting itself and retreating from a foe that wasn’t there. When the Turks arrived two days later, they found 10,000 dead and wounded Austrian soldiers amidst the smoldering ruins of what had been the Great Austrian Imperial Army’s camp.

Somewhere between the map coordinates of FrontPage Magazine, National Review Online, PJ Media, American Thinker, formally neoconservative magazines who may chime in on this (e.g. Commentary, The Weekly Standard) Gatestone Institute, the Republican National Committee et al. there lies the Karansebes encampment. Drunk with the schnapps of power, they see imaginary foes, retreat where they should regroup and attack, and when they attack, it’s their own they attack.

The GOP by now rides to battle under a standard with a caption it’s not even bright enough to read: “Republicans. They thirst for death.” The others do good work in the narrow areas they picked for their activism but act as though theirs were the only sectors under assault. They fire on soldiers on their own side who defend different sectors of the perimeter. Unfortunately, critical sectors through which the Turks are already pouring in, such as Open Borders, Immigration, “Civil Rights,” “White Privilege,” White Cowardice, Affirmative Action, United Nations and more.

Diana West is one more of the ablest soldiers shot by her own. There will be more. Until it may dawn on someone that the Turks are, in fact, coming. They are here.

Notes:

1.   The JBS is still at it, e.g. here.

2.   See, inter alia:

·       John H. Rousselot, “Civil Rights: Communist Betrayal of a Good Cause,” American Opinion, February 1964.

·       The John Birch Society, “What’s Wrong With Civil Rights?”

3.   Samuel Francis, “Neocon Invasion,” The New American, August 5, 1996

4.   Paul Gottfried, “On Neoconservatism”, Modern Age, Winter 1983. Neoconservatism is by now no longer a primarily Jewish phenomenon but practically the only form of conservatism still abroad and allowed to show up in America.

5.   I know that this point is covered in American Betrayal.

6.   These are by no means uncontested statements. For instance, Maisky in his memoirs (Memoirs of a Soviet Ambassador, The War: 1939-43) states that his plane took off from Gibraltar on July 4th at noon; Sikorski’s took off at 11 PM. This author is unaware of any books published by British authors that presents any but the official version of the events, but contrary references in the Polish language are innumerable: books, articles, documentary and feature films, as Sikorski’s murder was one of the most tragic events in Polish history. Skirting the more arcane theories, I relied mainly on Gibraltar ’43, one of the three books by the Polish historian Tadeusz Kisielewski dealing with this topic. The Polish Wikipedia entry entitled “Aviation catastrophe in Gibraltar, July 4, 1943” presents a version of events fairly close to mine here, with a bibliography.

7.   Such an assertion was made in detail in Gregory Douglas’s Gestapo Chief: The 1948 Interrogation of Heinrich Muller, Vol. 3: From Secret U. S. Intelligence Files. It is based on Kim Philby’s alleged personal account to Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller and on other Müller materials from the late 1940s and 50s. However, outside of that book, no recognized, credible source has confirmed that the Gestapo chief was seen, let alone alive, after his 1945 disappearance; until one does, a question mark must hang over this source.

8.   The French Sovietologist and specialist in USSR-Poland relations Alexandra Viatteau also supports (in her books and here) the “Philby done it” theory but asserts that the operation was conceived and executed solely by Moscow.

Takuan Seiyo is a European-born American writer living in exile in Japan. For his previous essays, see the Takuan Seiyo Archives.

# # #

Diana West: Swimming Against the Mainstream

By Cindy Simpson

FamilySecurityMatters.org

September 11, 2013

"The most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about."

That was the wisdom offered by award-winning novelist David Foster Wallace to the Kenyon College class of 2005, after he opened his memorable commencement address with this "didactic little parable-ish story":

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?"  And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

The graduates were then challenged by Wallace to recognize that their education did not necessarily teach them "how to think," but rather to realize their ability to determine what to think about. The rest of his speech focused on that determination and the resulting differences in interpretation based on one's self-awareness and worldview.

Wallace's wise "This is Water" words came to mind as I watched the drama begin to unfold around conservative author Diana West's new book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character.  For if "water" could represent the generally-accepted reality about whatever it is a person might determine to think deeply about and then challenge – then not only has West, like the "older fish" in Wallace's story, been "swimming the other way." She also asked, "How's the water?" and proceeded to write a book about her discoveries after she dared peer closely into the water's depths.

West's book seems to have stirred major ripples in the taken-for-granted narrative; ripples that have splashed the toes of the mainstream and its recognized experts, both liberal and conservative.

From the left, the negative response was expected.  From the right, the reaction from some influential sources could be described, at the very least, as perplexing.

The current that West dared swim against?  Narratives such as: McCarthy was wrong; powerful and influential communist spies and sympathizers did not really infiltrate the highest levels of our government, media, and entertainment; and any such spying since proven by historians had no real influence on our strategy during World War II or in its resolution and aftermath.

Those narratives are certainly popular, but are they true?

Numerous "anti-anti-communist" disinformation campaigns, such as "Operation Abolition," recently revealed in declassified archives – have been observed by Dr. Paul Kengor as being so successful, that "after two decades of being wrong and being duped by Stalin, by Stalinists, and by secret supporters of Stalin, that America's liberals/progressives...would come together to find their demon not in the duped liberals/progressives or pro-communists who defended Stalin as he murdered tens of millions, but in the anti-communists who tried to tell the truth to Americans about Stalin, his murderous state and his secret supporters in America."

Decades later, we find that even some conservatives appear to share not only some of the left's "demons" (using "McCarthyite" as a derogatory label), but also its heroes (like FDR).

Blogger Robert Stacy McCain, in his ongoing attempt to defend West and analyze the backlash against her book, observed that Roosevelt has replaced Lincoln "as the sanctified figure who cannot be examined critically" by conservatives without risk of being labeled "pro-Nazi." McCain noted the tendency of some conservatives "to promulgate and defend ‘noble lies' about American history, to decide who are the heroes and who are the villains, so that in the place of actual history, we have instead a political myth."

Have the "political myth" and anti-anti-communist narratives become the water in which we swim?

West was accused of being an "ideologue posing as historian" by noted historian and conservative Ronald Radosh, who has been West's most vocal critic. Radosh himself was the subject of similar accusations in a 1996 article in The Nation (which I happened to run across on a NYU-sponsored site dedicated to the innocence of known spy Alger Hiss) – for having the "ability to read into documents what he wished to believe in the first place." Another famous historian, Dr. Ilan Pappe, is credited with the frequent assertion: "We do [historiography] because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth seekers...There is no such thing as truth, only a collection of narratives."

So who are we to believe - "ideologues posing as historians," or historians confessing as ideologues?  What is "actual history," and who are its gatekeepers?

Writer David Solway, after chronicling the negative treatment of West's book by certain conservatives and the ensuing glee among the left, asked:

Why would a respected conservative writer attack a fellow conservative writer with such muscular rectitude that he opens an enormous crack in the façade of a much beleaguered movement, inviting its adversaries to exploit the weakness thus exposed? This is a more serious breach than presumably allowing anti-anti communism to run amok. What is it in the conservative sensibility that so readily turns against itself, creating rifts and fissures where there should be a fundamental unanimity regardless of intrinsic differences? This is not a crack, to quote Leonard Cohen, where "the light gets in." It's a crack where the liberal/left gets in, where the darkness gets in, where the opposition can wreak immense damage.

ritics' use of "buzz terms" like "McCarthyism and John Bircherism," argued West in her first Breitbart installment of a three-part rebuttal, "are not being used to shed light and truth but rather to stop debate."  West referred to David Horowitz's move to pull a favorable review of the book from the archives of FrontPage and replace it with a highly critical one by Radosh. Horowitz's justification in shutting down the book's potential-light-shining crack before it could be further explored:  that "the conservative movement had suffered from conspiracy-minded demagogues in the past."

Horowitz, in his rebuttal-to-West's-rebuttal, declared that "cover-ups often turn out worse for the guilty parties than the faults they seek to hide." He went on to make it quite clear who he finds guilty, apparently overlooking the thorough un-covering of the facts by West.

Clare Lopez, "Distinguished Senior Fellow" of the Gatestone Institute – who could hardly be accused of lacking credentials or seeking to hide anything – was apparently fired for her favorable spotlight on West's book in a recent essay. McCain, reporting on the "purge," quipped that readers should hurry and buy American Betrayal now, "before Ron Radosh can burn every copy in existence."

Clarice Feldman warned potential buyers that she was not intending to "attack West whose work I have not read, but to point out the dangers of demagogic writers – everywhere on the political spectrum and the emotional bonds their fans form with them."

"Dangers?"  To what or whom?  Historical truth or "political myth?"  "We scholars," "emotional" fans, naïve book-buyers who can't be trusted to judge the water for themselves?  The whole "conservative movement?"

"Don't go there, Nemo,"it's not safe!"

Of course, all of us wear worldview goggles that filter our responses to the information that we notice ("What the hell is water?") in front of us.  Unless – as Wallace challenged (and West endeavored) – we make an intentional effort to choose the subject and/or adjust our perspective.

But most lenses have become so distorted with "cultural Marxism," argues blogger "Andrew Mellon" in his positive review of West's book, "that individuals when faced with truth and logic are unable to process events objectively or with prudence – the narrative takes precedence over all else."

In his brilliant video on the Trayvon Martin narrative, Bill Whittle concluded:

And if all of this political power and journalistic malfeasance can be deployed to sell a tortured lie, as in the case of this little story, then what political power and journalistic malfeasance do you think might be deployed in making us buy a much larger one?

West's book ponders a similar question.

Mellon, in a follow-up post, notes that while some are focusing on the accuracy of American Betrayal's details and West's interpretations thereof – we shouldn't lose sight, most importantly, of the "broader insights of the book, in light of the current condition of Western Civilization."

We don't need to be recognized experts to see that, indeed, something has muddied the water. As conservatives, we should be able to strive, in unity, to get to the bottom of it – without betraying the principles we represent.

Cindy Simpson is a Christian, CPA, and business owner residing in Louisville, Kentucky. As a “citizen journalist,” her writing has appeared at American Thinker, World Net Daily, The Pearcey Report, and Catholic Online.

# # #

Revisiting the Diana West Controversy

By David Solway

PJ Media

September 16, 2013

The controversy currently raging among conservative luminaries over the substantive nature and scholarly status of Diana West’s new book, American Betrayal, need not be rehearsed in detail here; its features are by now reasonably familiar to most readers of the political sites. But it will do no harm to offer a schematic overview of the broad contours of the “debate”—to give it the politest of tags.

It began when David Horowitz at FrontPage Magazine scrubbed Mark Tapson’s favorable account of the book and replaced it with Ron Radosh’s intemperate and distressingly ad hominem demolition masking as a “review.” Indeed, Radosh’s logomachic intervention read more like a personal vendetta than a scrupulous assessment. As a seasoned writer and veteran debater, Radosh should have known better. From that point on, a war of words was launched and the psychodrama shows no signs of tapering off. West published her Rebuttal and was heatedly defended by the notable historian Andrew Bostom and by many of the talkbackers to Horowitz’s own site. Meanwhile Horowitz and Radosh, and even the orotund Conrad Black, continued to pummel both book and author.

I do not wish to enter into the vortex of the dispute. I readily admit that I am no expert on the subject West’s volume addresses. Was Harry Hopkins the infamous KGB agent 19 or was it Laurence Duggan? Was American WWII policy subtly shaped and surreptitiously directed by Soviet espionage and penetration of the inner circles of the White House—and if so, to what degree? Was Eastern Europe lost to “Uncle Joe” Stalin owing to American ineptitude or to Communist infiltration of the decision-making process? I am in no position to weigh in on the matter. These issues may—or may not—be satisfactorily settled in the future, provided an honest, impartial, and intellectual debate is permitted to flourish without rancor and personal vituperation.

I can only say that Diana West’s thesis is surely deserving of scholarly consideration, whether pro or con. Whether one agrees with her conclusions or not, one must recognize that her argument is meticulously researched and abundantly footnoted. It seems to me that David Horowitz was wrong to remove a review that he had originally vetted and, furthermore, to substitute a largely personal imprecation in its stead rather than, say, to post a countervailing review and let the reader decide. Whatever his motive, the decision leaves an editorial stench that is not easily dissipated.

This is unfortunate, for Horowitz is one of the great conservative writers of our time who has done yeoman service in defending the principles of liberal democracy, in both the political and educational domains. No less unfortunate, there has been far too much name-calling on either side of the embroilment. But it needs to be candidly said that the unseemly fracas began with Radosh’s and Horowitz’s ill-advised, adversarial tactics.

What strikes me as even more important is the damage that has been done to the integrity of the conservative movement—a movement that appears to be precipitously unraveling. Is it any accident that former CIA agent and conservative stalwart Clare Lopez was fired from her billet at the Gatestone Institute after posting an article in which, inter alia, she came to West’s defense? (Like Tapson’s review, her article has been expunged from the site where it first appeared.) To range further afield, when one regards the behavior of the Republican-dominated House, which is supposed to represent the conservative side on the American political scene—John McCain and Lindsey Graham carrying out Obama’s bidding on the Syrian and Egyptian files, Marco Rubio’s amnesty gambit, John Boehner’s generally waffling leadership—one can only wonder whether Michael Savage is right when he argues in Trickle Up Poverty that there is only one political party in the U.S.—but with two faces. (I’m tempted to call this party the Democans or the Republicrats.)

I see the conflict over American Betrayal as merely a subset of a much vaster phenomenon, namely, the ongoing implosion of the conservative ethos in the U.S. When nominal allies eschew reasoned analysis in discussion about their respective positions on matters of substance, and instead resort to bilious invective, ammoniac rhetoric, and invidious claims, we know that we are witnessing the degradation of a viable and honorable—and necessary—political and cultural institution. This is nothing less than giving hostages to the enemy. One does not practice krav maga on one’s peers and colleagues, and certainly not on the author of The Death of the Grown-Up. It is time to pull in our horns, cease defaming our own, refrain from self-extenuation, and begin conducting ourselves like menschen again.

# # #

M. STANTON EVANS

Harry Hopkins, Diana West and Me

By M. Stanton Evans

Posted at dianawest.net

September 9, 2013

To understand the attached email exchanges between John Earl Haynes and myself some background information is needed.

There are a lot of details here that amount to “inside baseball.” It is however precisely from the accumulation of such details that the true history of the Cold War will be, or more accurately should be, written.

By far the major issue in this discussion is whether President Roosevelt’s top adviser, Harry Hopkins, was in back channel communication with the Soviet KGB in the 1940s, and if so for what purpose he would have been in contact.

The role of Hopkins in this respect has recently been pushed to the forefront by Diana West’s book, American Betrayal, in which she references two Hopkins-related items derived from Soviet sources. One is a decrypted KGB message in the Venona cable series between Moscow and its U.S. agents. This involved a May 1943 conference (called Trident) between Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Present at the meeting was a KGB source code named “No.19”, who reported to the Soviets a confidential conversation between the two leaders.

In 1998, Air Force historian Eduard Mark published a lengthy essay about this cable and the Trident conference, concluding that “No. 19” in fact was Hopkins. (Though not contending that he was in such contact for disloyal purpose.)

A second Hopkins item referenced by West is the statement of a KGB defector, Oleg Gordievsky, quoted in a 1990 book by British Cold War historian, Christopher Andrew (KGB: The Inside Story). In this discussion, Gordievsky recalled a Moscow lecture by Iskhak Akhmerov, a one-time high ranking KGB “illegal” in the United States.

In this lecture, according to Gordievsky, Akhmerov said that during World War II the Soviets had many agents in the U.S., but that their “most important” agent was Hopkins. This shocking assertion – later modified by Gordievsky, per Andrew, to “unconscious agent”— was the more so as Hopkins in Gordievsky’s telling was identified by name, not by a pseudonym or symbol subject to interpretation.

Among other things discussed by Diana West, these Hopkins references have ignited a firestorm of attacks against her—principally by Ronald Radosh but also by others—accusing her of impugning the loyalty of Hopkins, and saying she is misrepresenting the Cold War record.

A main emphasis in this Radosh attack is the contention that Eduard Mark recanted his position on No. 19-as-Hopkins and that this discredits her position, to wit: “At a conference on Soviet espionage held a week before his untimely death, West’s source, Eduard Mark, publicly stated that he now acknowledged that Harry Hopkins was not Agent 19, and that the conclusion he reached in his 1998 article was false.”

The conference referred to was a meeting held at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington in May 2009, discussing the notebooks of another KGB defector, Alexander Vassiliev, and the book Spies, by John Haynes and Harvey Klehr, based on the Vassiliev data. The reason I somewhat mysteriously got pulled into the current dispute is that I happened to be present at this meeting, along with my associate and co-author-to-be, the late Herb Romerstein.

Also present at the meeting were Eduard Mark himself, Radosh and Harvard Cold War historian Mark Kramer. As the accompanying memos show, Radosh and Kramer have lately been contending that Eduard Mark got into an exchange with me about Hopkins, and that it was in the course of this that Mark recanted his position on No.19, saying that he had been wrong in naming this KGB source as Hopkins.

(This assertedly in response to a John Haynes analysis based on the Vassiliev papers, indicating that No. 19 in fact was Laurence Duggan, an oft-cited pro-Soviet official in the U.S. State Department of the era. A condensed version of this analysis is contained in the Haynes email to me of August 22, attached.)

I don’t pretend to know whether No. 19 was Hopkins or Laurence Duggan—there are problems either way—but I certainly know that the references to me by Kramer-Radosh are totally in error. I had no such encounter with Eduard Mark, about No. 19 or anything else, then or ever.

It was because of these inaccurate citations of me in support of Radosh’s attack on West that I wrote the accompanying memos, which supply other specifics on the matter. As I say in my second email, such wildly inaccurate statements about my alleged but nonexistent role in provoking Mark’s comments lead me to wonder about the whole recantation scenario.

Again, the point about all this is far larger than misstatements concerning me, or the book by Diana West. The real story to be told is the true saga of Harry Hopkins—FDR’s key adviser in the war years – a mystery that has yet to be unraveled.

The Evans-Hopkins Memos

#1:  M Stanton Evans to John Earl Haynes

Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 8:02 PM

To: John Haynes

Dear John,

It was good seeing you some weeks back at the Benn Steil event, though there wasn’t a chance to do much more than say hello. Ironically, in view of the current Ron Radosh attack on Diana West, both of them were present also.

In which connection, Diana West has forwarded to me her correspondence with you concerning Eduard Mark and Venona source 19, with a separate memo from Radosh (in which I am somewhat surprisingly and inaccurately mentioned). This quotes Mark Kramer on Eduard Mark's supposed recantation on the issue. In this memo, Kramer says he remembers my raising the issue of Hopkins and No. 19 at the VassilievSpies conference, and that Eduard Mark “intervened” in the course of my remarks to say that he had changed his mind about the subject.

Kramer further said that Eduard Mark and he discussed the matter on the way to the Metro, and Radosh adds the reinforcing comment that “others, including me, remember this quite well” (presumably meaning the conference part, as distinguished from the Metro, but maybe the latter also). In your letter to Diana West, you in substance concur with the above, though without any mention of me .

Concerning all of which, some observations, and a question.

First, if Mark Kramer and Ron Radosh “remember” such an episode involving Eduard Mark and me, they remember something that never happened. I had no such encounter with Eduard Mark about Harry Hopkins, No. 19, or anything whatever. My contribution to the discussion concerned J. Robert Oppenheimer. I had brought with me part of the FBI file on Oppenheimer, and read from it segments in which Communist leaders Steve Nelson and Bernadette Doyle were recorded by the Bureau as saying Oppenheimer was a CP member but had to lie low because of the war time work that he was doing. This reading led to a brief exchange between me and Vassiliev, a later rejoinder from Martin Sherwin, and later still a brief discussion between you and me about the Oppenheimer issue.

Thus the supposed recollections of Kramer and Radosh about my part in all of this are totally mistaken. I don't know what Eduard Mark may have said on the way to the Metro, or in other settings where I was not present, but he never said anything to me, or in response to me, about No. 19 and Harry Hopkins. If Kramer-Radosh are so distinct in their remembrance of something allegedly involving me that I know to be in error, I marvel at their powers of recollection.

So much for me. What actually happened on the Harry Hopkins front as I observed it was essentially as follows: The Hopkins-related comments that apparently ignited a response from Eduard Mark were made not by me but by Herb Romerstein. Herb got into a somewhat testy exchange with Vassiliev about Akhmerov, and in the course of this alluded to the Gordievsky/Akhmerov reference to Hopkins as a Soviet agent.

This seemingly angered Mark, who made a subsequent statement denouncing the allegation that Hopkins was a Soviet agent – comments evidently aimed at Herb, though not by name. None of this had anything to do with me. Even more to the point, it also had nothing to do with No. 19, but was instead apparently triggered by Herb and the Akhmerov matter. Equally important, it was not in my view a Mark recantation of anything, since his 1998 essay, though saying the case was ambiguous and uncertain, strongly implied that Hopkins was not a Soviet agent. In particular, Mark discussed the to him apparently greater likelihood that Hopkins was a hyper friendly contact with the Russians whose activities led some of them to think he was a kind of agent for them, since they didn’t know about things he was otherwise doing to oppose them.

Accordingly, none of what happened at the conference, so far as my knowledge and participation were concerned, amounted to any kind of recantation by Mark. If such recantation did happen on source 19 or anything else, it had nothing to do with me, or as far as I know Herb, or anything else occurring there that I was aware of then or later.

Again, if something was said by any of the parties where I wasn’t on the scene, I of course can’t confirm or deny what happened. But I certainly deny the Kramer-Radosh version involving me.

Now my question about all this. I have read with great interest your rebuttal to Mark's 1998 essay saying Hopkins was No. 19. In this rebuttal, written in January 2013, you counter with your thesis, backed with numerous references to Vassiliev’s papers, that No. 19 in fact was Laurence Duggan. You further contend, in answer to Mark's view that Duggan wasn't at the Trident conference, that he could have been, though not showing up on the attendance lists or in other relevant records, as an aide to Henry Wallace (whose presence at this particular meeting of Roosevelt and Churchill is based on your further inference from the cover names – quite reasonable, I think, as you and Mark both explain it, concerning Wallace.)

That said, my question is: If you knew Mark had recanted his position on Hopkins-No.19 three-plus years before you wrote your rebuttal in January 2013, why didn't you mention this in your essay? That obviously would have settled the matter beyond all cavil, as nothing could possibly have been more conclusive in favor of your analysis.

Indeed, mention of this could have obviated the need for a rebuttal entirely, since all you had to say was “Eduard Mark recanted his position on No. 19 in my presence at a conference in 2009.” Alternatively, if you wanted to write your rebuttal anyway to spell out the details for Mr. Fetter, it would have been an irrefutable capstone to your argument. But in the text I have you didn't use it.

Knowing how comprehensive and thorough you are both in documentation and in argument, I find all this extremely puzzling. Any clarification you can offer would be appreciated.

Best wishes,

Stan Evans

PS: Since drafting this memo, I have read your latest essay on Hopkins, written with Harvey Klehr. I notice that this contains a footnote on the Mark affair, to the same general effect as the version discussed above, thus giving the story greater prestige and status. As the person whose name has been freely and I might add rather recklessly tossed around –though not by you—as the supposed provocateur of Mark’s recantation ,I am intensely interested in knowing exactly how the recantation story came to be, and what might be the factual basis for it. (I note that in your email to Diana West you say you remember the remark at some session of the conference.) Any further information you can provide would be most welcome. Best, Stan

#2:  John Earl Haynes to M Stanton Evans 08/22/2013

Dear Stan:

We put the mention of Ed's remarks at the 2009 symposium in a note rather than in the text in order not to give it undue status because, most importantly, the Vassiliev notebooks provided more than ample documentation that "19" was Duggan, so Ed's 2009 remarks warranted noting but only noting.

In the essay we provided the page numbers of the entries on Duggan and "19" in Vassiliev's notebooks. There are many entries and here are three of relevance.

White Notebook #1 p. 45

Mer’s letters to C. through Zarubin

....

“Re “Frank.” – For the sake of convenience and simplicity I will continue to call “19” “Frank.”
My relationship with him has improved significantly. He is not displaying his former nervousness and conveys the impression of a person who is sincerely sympathetic to us…
Unfortunately, “Frank” is not especially active in serving us needed information. True, events have confirmed some of his principal reports over the past few months. He still refuses to meet more than once every four or five weeks. He attributes the skimpiness of his information to the fact that he deals primarily with his own area and doesn’t have any access to materials in other areas. He views himself as mistreated and oppressed in the office and doesn’t seek out close contact with his colleagues.

Just to be on the safe side, I tried to introduce him to “Nelly.” He politely declined this idea.
I offered him a phone number and address here or in Washington where he could call or write a message to me; he gently turned this down, too. All this shows that he prizes his safety and doesn’t want to become tightly connected to us.
Sometime in the future I may have to tell him my surname. It’s hard to set up a realistic cover story about how we got to know him, and equally hard to develop a natural friendship with him, when he doesn’t know my surname.
I hope he will not betray us on his own initiative: he is quite tightly connected to us through his materials (29.7.42).

* * * * *

Yellow Notebook #2 P. 30 (from Duggan's personal file)

Mer – to C 9.10.42
“He is an honest and genuinely progressive-minded person…He is a true American with all the patriotic qualities, and has spent a number of years doing significant, high-level work towards the realization of the USA’s imperialist ambitions. [Mer wanted to introduce 19 to “Nelly” in case he was drafted into the army.

Mer – to C 17.11.42
“He is a genuinely progressive American. He sympathizes with us and understands our role in this war, but at the same time, he is an American patriot through and through. His intellect is shaped by his continued, concrete work putting into practice America’s influence on its neighbors. He is not a fellowcountryman or a paid probationer, and he is absolutely determined not to risk his position. Having once been burned, he is prone to significantly exaggerating any danger. He used to bring me bundles of the most interesting materials from his office; now he does everything he can to avoid even citing his sources when he reports something to me.”
[Av annotation in right hand column] In his letters, Mer calls 19 Frank

* * * * *

And “Frank” is identified both in AV’s notebooks and in Venona as Duggan while Mer is identified in both as Akhmerov

* * * * *

The third passage of particular relevance to Venona 812 is from White notebook #1 page 55, an August 1944 message (after Venona 812)

C. to May (11 August 1944) (copy of cipher cable)

Information has been received that Amer. intelligence has installed microphones in all Soviet institutions in the US. Am. intelligence has established the names of many Sov. intel. agents working in the most varied businesses.
Change of pseudonyms:

Mer — Albert

Nelly — Stella

Pal — Robert

Polo — Donald

Jurist — Lawyer

Clever Girl — Myrna

Informer — Douglas

19 — Sherwood

Dir — Cat

Carmen — Miranda

Don — Senor

Satyr — Rita

Hell — Lion

* * * * *

Sherwood, the former “19”, is identified in the notebooks and in Venona as Duggan.

All of the pages where Duggan, "19", etc are in the notebooks and in Venona are in the essay and both sources are available on the web in easily searchable formats at the Wilson Center virtual archive. There are so many references to "19" as Duggan from the mid-30 to 1944 in AV's notebooks that I cannot take seriously the view that "19" in Venona 812 is someone other than Duggan.

Second, as we explained in the essay, we don't give much evidential weight to non-contemporaneous memories of what someone heard someone else say absent other corroboration. That is why we regard Gordievsky's twenty year old memory of what Akhmerov said of events twenty years earlier as worth noting but not much more than that. At the symposium Ed did mention briefly in one of the Q&A sessions that he no longer held to his view that "19" was Hopkins. I remember the remark but don't specifically remember at which session it was, only that it was an interjection when someone else was talking, presumably something involving Hopkins, but I don't remember who. Mark Kramer says it was in a session he chaired and while he thought it was an interjection on something you said he now thinks it might have been Herb. In any event he also talked to Ed about it when they went to the Metro after the session ended that day and Ed was clear he no longer held that "19" was Hopkins. And Ron Radosh also remembers Ed's remarks. I thought that in the essay, however, we should not go beyond my less clear memory which, of course, didn't bring you into it at all. In any event, given our attitude that hearsay evidence of this sort should be kept in mind but not given great weight, a note seemed the appropriate place. We simply to not regard what Ed said as of anything other than minor interest. It is irrelevant to the matter of "19's" identity.

As was mentioned in our essay, when Vassiliev's notebooks came into our hands, our regard for Ed's historical skills was such that he was one of the specialists we gave copies to a year before the notebooks were made public in order to prepare papers for the 2009 symposium.

When I gave him the notebooks I mentioned to him that there was material on "19" in the notebooks. This was not a total surprise to Ed. In 1999 Weinstein and Vassiliev's book, The Haunted Wood, had come out and there were references in it to Duggan with the cover name "19" in the 1930s. Andrew and Mitrokhin's first book, also 1999, also mentioned "19" as Duggan in the 30s. Ed and I had discussed this when the books came out. (Ed often stopped by my office at the Library of Congress to discuss Cold War history and our latest research.) Ed's assumption/hope was that "19" was Duggan only in the 30s and his conclusion about "19" in 1943 was still possible. I didn't think so, and both books reinforced my view that Harvey and I had been exercising proper caution in our Venona book decision to stick with the Venona analysts designation of "19" as unidentified. The notebooks, of course, settled the matter.

When I gave Ed the notebooks I assumed he would review the entries on "19" even though he was focused on Hiss. We were both busy in this period, me with getting Spies ready and Ed with his Hiss essay, and when we met we were usually discussed Hiss, a major concern to both of us and getting the Hiss story right was important to both of us.

I didn't want to be in an 'I told you so' mode, so I left it to Ed to raise the matter of "19" when he felt like it. I never had any concerns that he would not accept the evidence. Ed was an excellent archivally oriented historian, and after he examined them he regarded AV's notebooks as totally reliable and was enthusiastic that they would allow him to put an end to the Hiss matter. Ed was deeply frustrated, indeed outraged, that Intelligence and National Security had published an article by John Lowenthal that in a highly mendacious essay continued to defend Hiss and denied that "Ales" in Venona was Hiss. Ed responded with “Who Was ‘Venona’s ‘Ales’? Cryptanalysis and the Hiss Case,” Intelligence and National Security 18, no. 3 (Autumn 2003). He thought the essay he prepared based on AV's notebooks would be the definitive scholarly word on the Hiss case. It may be.

The only reason Ed's brief remark at the symposium sticks in my mind at all was that I had been waiting for him to bring up the "19" issue. I thought we might talk about it at the dinner after the end of the symposium for paper givers, but Ed begged off attending, explaining that lately his energy level had deteriorated and he found it difficult to stay awake after 9 PM. At the time I attached no special significance to that, but Ed died only a week or so later, in his sleep, from heart failure. I assume his declining energy was, in fact, a symptom of his declining heart. I thought it a great loss to scholarly history. It was also a personal loss to me. Ed was, well, a peculiar personality, a loner, and rubbed lots of people the wrong way. I, however, admired his dogged research skills, shared his interpretive stance toward Cold War history, and happily accepted his eccentricities (as he accepted mine). He was a friend and I regret his premature death.

John

#3:  M Stanton Evans to John Earl Haynes

On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 7:31 PM, Mary Jo and Bill

Dear John,

Thank you for your reply to my recent memo. I appreciate your taking the time from a crowded schedule to address my questions.

I wrote to you at such length because I wanted to correct the wildly inaccurate record out there concerning what I said at the conference, and also because I wanted to get your further comment on the Mark recantation issue.

In your response you de-emphasize the recantation business, saying it is a distraction from the main issue the evidence that No. 19 in fact was Duggan. That the main issue is Duggan vs Hopkins is of course true, but the two elements obviously go together. If Mark in fact recanted, as noted in my previous memo, that would for most people have clinched beyond any doubt that No. 19 was Duggan.

As to the significance of this whole side dispute, I also think it overblown – not just the recantation part, but the No. 19 stuff in general. The matter was never discussed by me at the conference, or by anyone else within my earshot. If it was discussed, I never heard it, or even heard about it in connection with the conference, until Radosh and Kramer brought it up in the attack on West.

In which connection, it’s noteworthy that Kramer in one of his emails describes the Mark recantation issue as a “red herring.” That’s an interesting thing for him to say, as he has been quite active in dragging this red herring across the path, and doing so repeatedly.

In point of fact, he and Radosh have raised the recantation issue at least four times I know of (there may be others I haven’t seen), three of them involving me – all for the purpose of clinching the argument that No. 19 was Duggan instead of Hopkins. These statements are explicit, quite circumstantial, and categorical in nature—and as they relate to me, completely false. They are as follows (emphasis added throughout):

1)    Radosh in his 7,000 word attack on West, entitled “McCarthy on Steroids” (August 7): “At a conference on Soviet espionage held a week before his untimely death, West’s source, Eduard Mark, publicly stated that he now acknowledged that Harry Hopkins was not Agent 19, and that the conclusion he reached in his 1998 article was false.”

2)    Radosh expanding on this on August 17, quoting an email from Kramer, saying: “Ron, I can definitely confirm it. I was chairing the session, and Ed intervened when Stan Evans referred to Harry Hopkins as No. 19. Ed said, ‘the Vassiliev notebooks show that this isn’t true. I thought it was but it isn’t. When I found out that I’m wrong, I’m willing to admit it.’ I talked about this with Ed after the session, as he and I were heading for the metro station.”

To this statement from Kramer, Radosh added: “Others, including me, remember this quite well.”

3)    On August 18, Kramer expanded further on the recantation theme in another message to Radosh, circulated to you and others. This says : “Yes, Ed made the comment while Evans was talking, but Evans just continued talking, evidently unaware (or at least not willing to acknowledge) that he was being contradicted.”

To this Kramer again added the comment about the metro, but with some puzzling changes: “I was unable to call on Ed because the session was already going too long and the WWICS had a reception scheduled. As Ed and I were walking to the metro afterward, I told him that I had wanted to have him speak but was worried that it would prompt further comments by Evans and Romerstein. So I just called a halt.”

Kramer wanted Eduard Mark to speak but didn’t call on him because of Evans and Romerstein? Compare this to the Kramer quotes from Mark, in paragraph #2 above, which are quite different . In the new version “Ed intervened” has disappeared, along with the rather full bodied statement by Mark recanting his position. Now it appears that I (and perhaps Herb) somehow or other prevented Mark from being called on to speak in answer to my alleged comments . Which is it?

4)    Also on August 18, Radosh emailed to Andrew Bostom, a person unknown to me but a defender of West, once more stressing Eduard Mark’s (non-existent) exchange with me, as relayed by Kramer and confirmed by Radosh. This is worth quoting at some length:

“So you [Bostom] accept the hearsay of Gordievsky, then a junior officer, of what he heard 20 years ago supposedly from Akhmerov 40 years ago, and don’t accept what Mark Kramer, a distinguished scholar and Cold War historian, says took place at a conference that is recent at which I and others heard this exchange? The exchange came up while discussing another point, and was not the focus of the entire conference. It occurred only because he answered the argument made by Stan Evans. Why should there have been a major presentation about it in an exchange during a Q and A discussion?

“If this is hearsay, and hence you dismiss it, you must also dismiss the Gordievsky claim as hearsay. I await your answer to this, Dr. Bostom.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best Wishes,

Stan Evans

In Defense of Diana West

By M. Stanton Evans

cnsnews.com

September 13, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

# # #

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY AND PAVEL STROILOV

Why Academics Hate Diana West

By Vladimir Bukovsky and Pavel Stroilov

Posted on www.Breitbart.com

Diana West, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character.

St. Martin’s Press; Hardcover; 403 pages; $26.99.

Groundbreaking books about the history of communism, such as Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago or Viktor Suvorov’s Ice-Breaker, are never written by “professional” historians. Indeed, historians typically meet those books with remarkable hostility. Yet, non-academic history books certainly have their advantages. For one thing, they are readable. More often than not, they are better researched, too. Above all, they are intellectually honest, free from the unspoken taboos of the academic world, and from allegiances to theories and to colleagues that tie the hands of many an academic. Where a professional historian pursues an academic career, the amateur seeks after the truth. Ignorant of taboos, the amateur can follow the trail of evidence to wherever it leads, and discovers things which, according to the academic conventional wisdom, are best left untouched and unsaid.

That is what Diana West does in American Betrayal. By her own admission, she started that book with no intention of writing much about the Cold War. She started not as a historian, but a simple mortal puzzled and disturbed by the obvious question: how on earth could this great civilization of ours have degraded into such a hypocritical nonsense as political correctness? Having written her previous book about the death of the civilization of grown-ups, now Mrs. West, in her own words, attempts a post mortem – only to discover unmistakable signs of a murder. She digs deeper, “tracing references and footnotes backward along a well-mapped historical route that has simply fallen into disuse”, as she puts it - and discovers the true history of the 20th century, the history of communist crimes against humanity, to which so many in the Western Establishment were accomplices and collaborators; and then a massive cover-up of those crimes, which infested our entire public life with a culture of hypocrisy and double standards.

It is this search for the causes of our moral crisis that brings her as far back in history as 1930s, when the Great Famine was artificially organized by the Soviets to force the peasants into collective farms, and the Western media consciously helped Stalin to cover up that mass murder. She cites a fascinating account by a repentant journalist who had been present at the meeting of Moscow press corps with the Soviet chief censor, Umansky, to work out a “formula of denial”, after one reckless correspondent reported the news of the famine in 1933. After “much bargaining in the spirit of gentlemanly give-and-take”, the “formula” was agreed, wherefrom the Western journalists and the Soviet censor proceeded to party with vodka and luxurious snacks until early hours in the morning. The next day, it was infamous Walter Duranty who took the lead in attacking the famine report as an incompetent and biased “big scare story”, and then explaining: “There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition”.

“To understand this episode,” Mrs. West comments, “is to understand the extent to which Orwell’s ‘Newspeak’ had its birth in the pages of the free press as much as in the totalitarian censor’s office. […] Looking back over more than three-quarters of a century of Big Lies to follow, this initial instance, this first time, demands a level of scrutiny and reflection it doesn’t ordinarily receive, not having been recognized as the Original Sin that would ultimately corrupt us all. It was as if society suddenly became incapable of making the most elementary if vital connections between facts and conclusions, logic and judgment, ideas and implications, and truth and morality.”

By that time, she discovers, the likes of Duranty were not only the opinion-makers in the West, but also the decision-makers. Thus, the architects of the ‘New Deal’, including FDR himself, consciously intended it as the beginning of socialism in America. That, according to their designs, would open a way to a gradual convergence with Stalinist Soviet Union under a future socialist world government. In a way, that convergence had already begun, as the Roosevelt Administration was full of Soviet agents of influence, including Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, and crucially, Harry Hopkins – FDR’s alter ego, his ‘personal foreign secretary’, and the most powerful man in the then White House.

In the face of those proven facts, most of them now recognized even by academics, Mrs. West asks some bold but legitimate questions. Did all these people (the glorious FDR administration) really conduct the Second World War in the interests of Western democracies, or was it in the interests of Comrade Stalin? Having declared that war to defend the freedom of Poland, the Western democracies ended it by surrendering Poland and a dozen of other nations to a totalitarian empire worse than Hitler’s. Was that really a victory? Above all, was that outcome inevitable, or did it, to a greater or lesser extent, result from the work of the Soviet agents of influence in the positions of power in the West?

Having researched the mountains of evidence, she persuasively demonstrates:

·      How the most important strategic decisions of the WWII, such as effectively abandoning the Italian front to concentrate forces for the invasion of Normandy, were taken because Stalin demanded them. Against the counsel of Churchill and military commanders on the ground, the pro-Soviet FDR administration rejected such sensible alternatives as advancing from Italy to Balkans and Eastern Europe, which might have limited the Red Army’s advance to the West.

·      How every attempt by anti-Nazi underground in Germany to secure Allied support for their plots to overthrow the Nazi regime was thwarted by Soviet agents in Washington – because the German conspirators were anti-communist as well as anti-Nazi. So another opportunity to destroy the Nazi regime and win the war without letting Stalin conquer half of Europe was lost.

·      how the notorious Yalta division of Europe, surrendering half the continent to Stalin, was accepted by the pro-Soviet FDR administration without any serious attempt to find an alternative solution. In effect, the US simply went along with the Sovietisation of Eastern Europe in breach of Yalta Agreement, and betrayed the allied democratic governments of East European states.

·      How thousands of American POWs “liberated” by Soviets from the Nazis were simply abandoned to rot in the Gulag as hostages to Stalin, in the vain hope of preserving good relations with Moscow after the war.

Conversely, our own research in Soviet secret archives has led us to very similar conclusions about FDR and his administration. For example, here is a couple of quotations from transcripts of FDR’s conversations with Stalin while Churchill was away. At Tehran Conference:

Roosevelt says it would be better not to mention India when talking to Churchill, because he, Roosevelt, knows that Churchill has no thoughts concerning India. Churchill plans to postpone the solution of this problem till the end of the war.

Com[rade] Stalin says that India is a sore point for Churchill.

Roosevelt agrees. However, he says, Britain will have to do something about India. He, Roosevelt, hopes to discuss the problem of India with Marshal Stalin one day. He finds the parliamentary system of government to be unsuitable for India and it would be better to create something like the Soviet system in India, beginning from the bottom rather than from the top. Perhaps, that would be the system of Soviets.

Com. Stalin answers that to begin from the bottom would mean taking the revolutionary path. There are a lot of various nationalities and cultures in India. But there are no forces or groups capable of taking power in the country.

(Russian state archive of social and political history (RGASPI), fund 558, inv. 11, file 235, pp. 8-12)

And this one occurred on FDR’s arrival in Yalta two years later:

Roosevelt says that now, after he had seen the senseless destruction Germans caused in Crimea, he would like to liquidate twice as many Germans as he wished before. It is absolutely necessary to liquidate 50 thousand German-Prussian officers.

(RGASPI, fund 558, inv. 11, file 234, pp. 3-7)

Mrs. West has proven her point without access to secret archives, on the basis of published sources alone. She would have found this much more difficult if she tried to continue her narrative much beyond the Second World War. Scandalously, most secret archives of that period remain classified to this day, and very few historians ever complain about that. It required some extraordinary efforts on our part to smuggle some of those archives out of Russia and make them available to the Western public. Of course, our efforts were attacked furiously by the very same academics who now attack American Betrayal, using exactly the same expressions. It is their job to suppress any truth about the Cold War. However, despite all their efforts, we now know that the so-called Cold War was never particularly cold on the Soviet side and never much of a war on the Western side:

·      How the ‘consensus’ of Western Establishment had accepted socialism as the inevitable future of the world, and ‘convergence’ with the Soviet system as the only alternative to the Cold War.

·      How Western leaders developed their ‘détente’ with the Soviets secretly, treacherously, through KGB channels, as a means to achieve that ‘convergence’;

·      How all Western policy throughout the Cold War was aimed to preserve ‘stability’ of the Evil Empire and not to achieve its destruction;

·      Finally, how all Western governments sided with the last Soviet leader against his people, and secretly worked with Comrade Gorbachev in the last desperate attempt to save his regime and his empire. Ever at Gorby’s service, they did everything in their power to prevent unification of Germany, de-communisation of Eastern Europe, collapse of the Soviet Union, and finally – alas, successfully – a Nuremberg-style trial of communism.

That treacherous Establishment is still there. We are still governed by a nomenklatura of collaborationists, Petains and Quislings of the Cold War. Mrs. West has reached that conclusion merely by examining the first chapters of this sad story. Sure enough, there are mountains of other and more recent evidence to support her conclusions. But of course, whatever the evidence, the ‘consensus’ will never plead guilty. Rather, they will try and usurp the judicial seat.

As Mrs. West rightly points out, the moment the free world recognized the evil empire of Communism as a country we could make deals with, even alliances with (be that even in such desperate circumstances as the Second World War) – that moment was “a Faustian turning point”. By the very nature of the Soviet system, the history of ‘East-West relations’ could only be a history of deals with the devil, with all the unfortunate consequences such deals had always been reputed to entail. From Yalta to Malta, all those summit-meetings were cannibal feasts of the same kind as Western journalists’ party with a Soviet censor in 1933 Moscow. Therefore, if some 80 years later we find the Western Establishment to be utterly corrupt, we should know what has corrupted them.

* * *

The Left have learnt a lot since the times of Duranty and Agitprop. They no longer try to argue with such books as Mrs. West’s. They no longer try to sue us for libel in the courts of law. They quietly assassinate such books well in advance, by confidential e-mails to publishers and editors. In rare cases when that does not work and the book is out, they simply ignore it and wait for another crisis in the Middle East, or the release of the next series of the latest blockbuster, or mid-term elections, to distract the public attention from everything else. They simply let the dangerous revelations sink in the massive flood of information that overwhelms today’s readers.

Fortunately, this did not happen with American Betrayal. The Left held their nerve all right; but - perhaps unexpectedly for Mrs. West – her book greatly offended certain ‘conservative’ academics as well. It emerged that, in her “reckless” quest for the truth, she broke a number of taboos recognized across the academic world, Left to Right. She attacked certain cows that are sacred across the political spectrum; gentlemanly ‘formulas of denial’ long agreed between academics of all colors; certain ‘common values of mankind’, to use Comrade Gorbachev’s favorite phrase. Her facts (it has been reluctantly admitted) are of course correct, but her awful conclusions contradict “the consensus of every historian of the war”. The “consensus” is that Soviet agents of influence had no real influence, that FDR was a great patriot and war leader, and that Stalin’s occupation of half of the world was the best possible outcome of the war. On these points, it has emerged, the ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ academics have no disagreements. All their disagreements are about how exactly to explain away the facts that do not fit into their “consensus”, and how exactly to suppress dissent.

So, while the Left applied their usual tactics of silent censorship, the less advanced ‘conservative academics’ have only reached the mediocre Agitprop level, and responded with a Soviet-style propaganda campaign against Mrs. West and her book. In the best traditions of those campaigns, most of the eminent critics attacked the book without ever reading it, and some of them even admitted this. Come to think of it, one hardly needs to read a book in order to accompany any mention of it with a garland of epithets such as “awful”, “embarrassingly kooky”, “poorly conceived”, “ill-informed”, “conspiracy-mongering”, “preposterous”, “incompetent”, and “dishonest”, and to insult the author in similarly intelligent expressions, including positive assertions that Mrs. West is insane (pity Professor Lunz is no longer with us). This is all the ‘conservative academics’ did, all they could do, and all they needed to do. Just look at their headlines:

·      McCarthy on Steroids;

·      Diana West vs. History

·      Why I Wrote a Take-Down of Diana West’s Awful Book;

·      Diana West’s Attempt to Respond;

·      Diana West Down Crackpot Alley;

·      Diana West Invents a New Conspiracy; etc., etc.

Amazingly and alarmingly, it was the Frontpage Magazine who published the Pravda-style leader which triggered that campaign, and provided a catalogue of smears and insults for endless repetition by other members of the consensus. No doubt a highly distinguished ‘conservative historian’ called Professor Radosh wrote a lengthy review of American Betrayal, headlined (with remarkable wit, good taste, and academic courtesy, if we may say so) McCarthy on Steroids. There, the Learned Professor dismissed the author as Sen. “McCarthy’s heiress” and the book as a “yellow journalism conspiracy theory” not really deserving the honour of his eminent critique. In his infinite generosity, however, the Learned Professor reluctantly agrees to provide some, and picks several specific points from American Betrayal to accuse Mrs. West of dishonesty and incompetence.

For anyone who has read both Mrs. West’s book and the Professor’s review, however, it is the review that is dishonest and incompetent. The Professor’s trick is to pick a couple of minor points from the book, invent a few more points of his own which he falsely attributes to the book, declare all those points to be “the pillars of West’s conspiracy theory”, and then to ‘disprove’ them with all academic solemnity. Unable to argue with the book itself, he instead argues with his own misrepresentation of the book.

He starts with Harry Hopkins, FDR’s alter ego and the most important Soviet agent in his administration. The fact that Hopkins was a Soviet agent has been known for a long time (though perhaps not as widely known as it deserves to be). Mrs. West simply brought together the mountain of evidence already available. That includes the testimony of Oleg Gordievsky, a very high-ranking and very reliable KGB defector. That includes the statement of George Marshall, the wartime US Army’s Chief of Staff and Hopkins’s friend, who told his official biographer: “Hopkins’s job with the president was to represent the Russian interests. My job was to represent the American interests.” That includes the episode documented in the Mitrokhin archive about Hopkins tipping off the Soviets about the FBI surveillance of certain Soviet spies; and so on, and so forth. There are several chapters in the book devoted to the evidence of Hopkins’s treason. In addition to all that, in one paragraph Mrs. West mentions the suspicions, expressed by some, that the mysterious Soviet agent identified in Venona cables only as ‘Agent 19’ was none other than Hopkins.

And here is what is supposed to be a fair summary from Professor Radosh: “A key assertion for West is that FDR’s closest advisor, Harry Hopkins, was actually the Soviet agent known in the Venona decrypts as ‘Agent 19’”. In the next thousand words, the Professor endeavours to prove that Agent 19 was in fact another man, and then hastily concludes that Hopkins therefore was not a Soviet agent, and therefore Mrs. West’s book is rubbish.

Whoever ‘Agent 19’ in fact was, it appears to have escaped the scholarly attention that the very codename ‘Agent 19’ suggests that there might have been more than one Soviet agent in wartime Washington. Hopkins still might have been one of them, and a lot of other evidence suggests that he was. But even if he was not, the difference between an agent and a fellow-traveller is hardly significant for Mrs. West’s argument. She is writing not about cloaks and daggers, but about the moral corruption of the Western world, resulting from complicity of the likes of Hopkins in Stalin’s crimes, and the subsequent cover-up of that complicity by the likes of Radosh. How does it matter whether this particular Hopkins was in fact recruited by the Soviets or simply acted as a Soviet agent by his own choice? The difference is no greater than between a ‘liberal’ academic liar and a ‘conservative’ one.

Next, Professor Radosh takes objection to Mrs. West’s point about the massive military supplies to the Soviets under the ‘land lease’ program, administered by Hopkins. Mrs. West cites evidence that those supplies were given a priority even over urgent needs of US troops on the grounds, and that this policy contributed to such major catastrophes of WWII as the defeat on Philippines and the fall of Singapore. Rather sensibly, she links this with the evidence of Hopkins’s treason. Among other things, she cites interesting evidence that under the cover of ‘lend lease’, Hopkins secretly supplied the Soviets with top secret technology, including details of the Manhattan Project and sensitive atomic materials such as uranium and heavy water.

In response, the Learned Professor solemnly proves that the uranium was in fact Uranium-238, not Uranium-235, and therefore did not help the Soviets to make the nuclear bomb; that the first Soviet nuclear bomb was only made in 1949; and that it was made of plutonium. Ergo, all the ‘land-lease’ supplies to the Soviets were perfectly kosher and in the national interest.

With equal honesty, Professor Radosh then conclusively disproves several amusing historical anecdotes which he falsely attributes to Mrs. West’s book. Towards the end, however, he has another trick to play. Mixed into his list of alleged factual inaccuracies (which are not really in the book), we suddenly find Mrs. West’s alleged opinions about the merits or motives of FDR’s decisions to invade Normandy, not to work with German anti-Nazi underground, or to go along with Sovietisation of Eastern Europe. Not only does the Learned Professor distort the substance of those opinions, he also treats them as if they were factual inaccuracies; and then purports to ‘disprove’ them by citing the conventional opinions of people such as Averill Harriman, whom he describes as “a stalwart anti-Communist”.

Having thus demonstrated that Mrs. West’s conclusions contradict the academic consensus, Professor Radosh evidently considers this to be the end of the matter. The rest of his review is just a copy-paste of his usual comments on anything new anybody said or wrote about the Cold War in recent years (or at least, anything without a satisfactory number of Radosh quotations). As per usual, this book is another “yellow journalism conspiracy theory”, it is McCarthyist, there is nothing really new in it, and academics know best.

This ‘review’, with all its hatred and lies, comes at no surprise to those of us who have had the misfortune of hearing about Professor Radosh before. What is disquieting is the sight of the ‘conservative’ crowd rushing into that campaign on sheer herd instinct, not only without reading the book, but apparently even without reading the Radosh review.

After all, its dishonesty is crying out to be noticed. It is dishonest to use meaningless labels in a debate. It is dishonest to attack anything whatsoever as ‘McCarthyist’. It is dishonest to attack anything as a ‘conspiracy theory’. So long as there are conspiracies in the world, a conspiracy theory may be perfectly true. It is a conspiracy theory that Al Qaeda organised the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and yet, it happens to be true. It was a conspiracy theory that the Nazi leaders plotted aggressive wars and genocide, but it was proven, and the conspirators went to the gallows. Unlike ‘academic consensus’, conspiracy is a concept with a clear definition; so much so that prosecutors can prove conspiracy theories beyond reasonable doubt in court. Moreover, the criminal law concepts of conspiracy and complicity are not very far apart. Almost anything we say about communist crimes against humanity can be attacked as a conspiracy theory – and, as a rule, is attacked in these terms by Radosh & Co.

It is high time to stop dismissing things as conspiracy theories or accepting things as being consistent with the academic consensus. Some of us here are talking about truth and lies. And this, perhaps, is precisely what annoys the academics, whose monopoly on writing history depend upon the half-truths of the ‘consensus’.

* * *

There is another danger in attacking books without reading them. Aimed at the fake Radosh version of American Betrayal, the criticism obviously missed its target. Better still, the campaign has been a perfect illustration of the very point of the book (in Diana West’s original version): that ‘the consensus’ about the Cold War is false and corrupt. It is a product of the great cover-up. It was the same consensus who first denied the facts about the Soviet crimes and Western complicity, then reluctantly admitted the facts but explained them away, and has never permitted any honest conclusions or even an honest debate.

It used to be a consensus that there was no famine in the Soviet Union, just a mortality from diseases due to malnutrition. It used to be a consensus that Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg were innocent victims of ‘McCarthyism’, convicted by so many conspiracy theorists. Unless we are confusing him with some other pre-eminent historian, Professor Radosh’s own claim to fame is that he first attacked the Rosenbergs judgement in pretty similar terms to his review of American Betrayal, but then considered the evidence, changed his mind, and wrote a book persuasively re-arguing the prosecution case some 30 years after the verdict. There was a time, too, when the innocence of Alger Hiss was as much of a consensus as the innocence of Harry Hopkins. It is the same consensus which cultivated the myths about the struggle of ‘hawks’ and ‘doves’ in the Politburo, and indignantly dismissed any suggestion that the Soviet Union might one day collapse. Instead, the consensus prescribed to place all our hopes into Comrade Gorbachev and his forthcoming renewal of socialism. It is the same consensus which misinformed the most disastrous decisions of the Cold War - responsible, perhaps, for millions of deaths. In any other walk of life (say, medicine), incompetence at a much smaller scale would cause those ‘specialists’ not only to be disqualified, but to be sued in courts for the rest of their lives. Pity this never happens to historians.

It is in the nature of a totalitarian regime to try and corrupt not only its own society, but anybody within its reach. This is how they conquer the world. Communism has corrupted greater men than a few arrogant academics. Indeed, the academics turned out to be one of the easier targets. As ‘Sovietologists’ and ‘Kremlinologists’, their position depended on their ability to travel to Moscow, and therefore, on KGB’s good will. Having now mutated into ‘Cold War historians’, they are dependant on having such limited access to secret archives as Moscow would choose to grant them. As academics, they are committed to their own theories, true or false. As a ‘community’, they are bound together with their corrupt colleagues, and have to defend their collective monopoly against intruders. It is for a very long time that they have been no more than a self-serving nomenklatura, caring nothing about the truth, but only about their own elevated positions. Like politicians. Like the media. Like the rest of the modern world.

American Betrayal is a book about the origins of that corruption. No wonder it has been so popular with thousands of readers who are sick to death of today’s world with all its hypocrisy and lies, and long for an explanation of our moral crisis. Mrs. West sought an answer and found it. As a civilization, we have gone through a major moral disaster. We have been accomplices to mass murders. Moreover, we then tried to cover them up and to live on as if nothing happened. Without a reckoning, without so much as facing the truth about our history, we shall never recover:

“We condemn the German population of the police state from looking the other way from and doing nothing about the Jewish annihilation under way in Nazi concentration camps; we never ask to question ourselves living large in the free world and looking the other way from and saying nothing about ethnic, political, class and religious annihilation under way in Soviet concentration camps. This split vision derives from the triumph of Communism’s unceasing world revolution against “traditional” morality, objective morality, the morality of fixed standards by which men navigate, or at least perceive the shoals of evil and treacherous behaviors. Such morality tells us there is no separating the idea from its toll. This is the lesson we have erased from our slate.”

No wonder, too, that this book is hated by ‘the consensus’, who feel perfectly comfortable in today’s world, and see no moral crisis at all. They have never thought of the Cold War as a great battle against the ultimate evil that has changed our civilization beyond recognition. To them, the history of that battle has been no more than a comfortable job. They never saw establishing the truth about it as a sacred duty we owe to the memory of millions of victims; but merely as a matter for “gentlemanly give-and-take” between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’, leading to a sound academic consensus.

Yet, they instinctively know this whole subject to be a minefield. The more evidence comes to light, the more scholarship is required to explain it away. Any discussion of the Soviet influence in the West must be channeled, carefully and professionally, into the issue of Soviet ‘agents’ (leaving aside all other kinds of secret collaborators, fellow-travelers, useful idiots, and other forces of progress). Then, as swiftly and skillfully as before, the idea of ‘agents’ must be replaced with ‘spies’, leaving aside the only kind of Soviet agents who mattered – the agents of influence. And then, you can argue as long as you like about whether or not one particular Hopkins or another really passed secret information to Moscow, and if yes, just how sensitive that information was, and whether it really helped to create the Soviet nuclear bomb… A nice, endless debate with no practical conclusions– just what the academics need.

Diana West, with her “reckless” discoveries, has jeopardised their comfortable world. Once you start talking about moral responsibility for crimes against humanity, what is left of that academic hair-splitting which has been the whole basis of their consensus, and their very existence? How great is a moral difference between an executioner and a mere conformist, between an agent and a sympathiser, between a ‘liberal’ academic and a ‘conservative’ one?

One thing that has particularly irritated the Consensus was Mrs. West’s comparison of America, governed by Soviet agents, to an occupied country. No wonder. If the country was occupied and governed by quislings, we have to stop talking about ‘spies’ and instead have to talk about collaborationists. Any country that has done this in the past could not escape the conclusion that the entire Establishment, to a greater or lesser extent, had been responsible. And this is one conclusion which the entire Consensus had been working hard to avoid for the past 75 years.

While American Betrayal does reveal many little-known and interesting facts, Mrs. West is very far from claiming any credit for her discoveries. She pays excessive tribute to her academic sources. What she does say is that all those facts do not fit into the overall ‘conventional’ theories of history; that the known facts invite very different conclusions from those we have been offered. The only role she claims is that of the child from Andersen’s fairy tale, pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes on, while the chamberlains still walk behind him bearing the train that isn’t there. She only claims “to connect the dots”, which is a very modest description of the huge and brilliant work she has obviously done. Yet, it is a fairly accurate description of what the Learned Professors have obviously failed to do.

No doubt, when they angrily protest that they had known all these facts all along, they are for once truthful. The sheer number of their academic degrees bears witness to their infinite knowledge. It is just that they lacked honesty and courage to tell us the truth.

Clearly, history is far too important to be left to the historians.

# # #

APPENDIX 1

News Release

Center to Honor Syndicated Columnist and Author Diana West as 2013 Recipient of the Mightier Pen Award

Washington, D.C., September 12, 2013: The Center for Security Policy announced today that the 2013 recipient of its Mightier Pen Award will be Diana West, a nationally syndicated columnist and author of The Death of the Grown-up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization, co-author of Shariah: The Threat to America, and most recently author of American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character. The award will be presented at a luncheon on November 20th at the Union League Club in New York City.

Diana West’s weekly newspaper column is syndicated by Universal Uclick, and appears in over 100 publications nationwide, as well as at her website http://www.dianawest.net. West also serves as Washington correspondent for the European weekly newspaper Dispatch International. Her work has appeared in many publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, The New Criterion, The Public Interest, Women’s Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, and The Washington Post Magazine; her fiction has appeared in Atlantic Monthly. She has made numerous radio appearances and as a former CNN contributor, she made frequent television appearances on the former CNN show, “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” She was recently featured in the Glenn Beck TV documentaries “The Project” and “Rumors of War III.”

Ms. West joins an illustrious group of authors, journalists and essayists who have received this recognition for their commitment to a robust national security and their efforts to educate our countrymen and women about the need to practice the philosophy President Reagan called “peace through strength.” Previous recipients include: Mark Helprin, Charles Krauthammer, Roger Ailes, William F. Buckley, Jr., A.M. Rosenthal, Andrew C. McCarthy, Norman Podhoretz, Claudia Rosett, and Monica Crowley.

In announcing this recognition, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy, observed:

“Diana West is among America’s most thoughtful and intellectually invigorating writers of our time. Her efforts to illuminate the contemporary threats to our society and culture — and to map out their historical antecedents and the appropriate responses to them — in order to preserve our freedoms, Constitution and nation are exemplary. We take great pride in bestowing this recognition on a cherished friend and admired colleague.”

APPENDIX 2

Timeline

Chronology of Attacks and Pieces I Posted in Self-Defense at http://www.dianawest.net

July 14, 2013

·      I write: “American Betrayal Purged at Frontpage”

August 7, 2013

·      Frontpage Magazine publishes “McCarthy on Steroids” by Ronald Radosh.

·      This 7,000-word-attack inspired a series of copycat attack pieces written by people who have read the Radosh review, but quite obviously not the book.

·      I write: “If Frontpage Will Lie about This, What Won’t They Lie About?”

·      Pajamas Media publishes “Why I Wrote a Take-Down of Diana West’s Awful Book” by Ronald Radosh.

August 8, 2013

·      Radosh re-publishes his Pajamas Media “take-down” piece at Frontpage as “Diana West Down Crackpot Alley.”

·      Frontpage editor David Horowitz publishes an editorial headlined: “Our Controversy with Diana West.”

·      David Mills, executive editor of First Things, posts at First Things’ website a piece called “American Betrayal, Truculently Reckless.”

·      I write: “If Frontpage Lies about This, They’ll Lie about Anything, Pt. 2”

August 9, 2013

·      Frontpage publishes Jeffrey Herbst published “Diana West vs. History.” Ronald Radosh, too, published another piece at Frontpage on August 9: “Diana West Attempts to Respond.”

·      I write: "Professor Radosh Gets an `F’ "

August 11, 2013

·      The American Thinker publishes “Demagogic Writers and the People Who Love Them” by Clarice Feldman.

·      I write: “The War on American Betrayal: On the Question of Scholarship”

·      I write: “The War on American Betrayal: The Collegial Email”

August 12, 2013

·      Ronald Radosh publishes an addendum to his 7,000 word Frontpage review at American Thinker. It is called “History as Ideology: Further Thoughts on American Betrayal.”

·      Ron Capshaw posts at the American Thinker blog a post called “The Beginning of Wisdom.”

·      I write: “Ronald Radosh Claims I Attack Historians: Is He Right?”

August 13, 2013

·      I write: “REJECTED by American Thinker: My Rebuttal to Unsubstantiated Charges against My Scholarship”

August 15, 2013

·      David Horowitz publishes at Breitbart News “What Difference Does It Make? A Response to Diana West.”

·      I write my syndicated column: “In Defense of My Livelihood”

·      I write: “I Got Plenty of Evidence”

August 16, 2013

·      National Review Online publishes “Defaming FDR: And Other Great Men Besides” by Conrad Black. The New York Sun publishes the same piece as “FDR Betrayed: How Diana West Errs on Roosevelt and the Great Heroes of the Cold War.”

·      I write: “Another Day, Another Attack on American Betrayal.” NRO posts this at The Corner, not the homepage alongside Black’s attack.

·      I write: “Footnotes to Chapter 9, American Betrayal”

·      I write: “Flash: Latest `Collegial’ Email from Ronald Radosh”

·      I write: “Harry Hopkins: Did He Warn the Ambassador or Warn the Embassy”

August 19, 2013

·      I write: “ `Great Swathes’ and Citizen Journalists Defense American Betrayal”

August 26, 2013

·      I post: Flashback: M. Stanton Evans Rebuts Ronald Radosh 2008

September 3, 2013

·      I write: Clare Lopez: “Recognizing the Wrong People”

September 5, 2013

·      I write: “Who Knew? Overconfident Ivy Education Threatens the Republic”

September 6, 8 and 10, 2013

·      “The Rebuttal” runs in three parts at Breitbart News.

September 7, 2013

·      David Horowitz publishes “Reply to Diana West” at Breitbart News.

September 9, 2013

·      David Horowitz publishes at Frontpage: “Diana West Invents a New Conspiracy.”

September 11, 2013

·      Conrad Black publishes at National Review Online, “Diana West’s Epic Fail: She Gets History Spectacularly Wrong.”

Discover the Networks, the Horowitz Freedom Center’s clearinghouse on anti-Americanism, now features a new entry: “Diana West vs. Frontpage.”

APPENDIX 3

Warning: Historians at Work

By Diana West

September 9, 2013

Air Force historian Eduard Mark, now deceased, wrote a paper in 1998 linking the codename "19" in KGB cable 812 from the Venona archive to Harry Hopkins.

Mark's thesis is discussed on two pages of American Betrayal – one detail in a 403-page book with 944 endnotes. It is a hallmark of the weird war on American Betrayal that reviewer Ronald Radosh inflated several such details out of all recognition and then attacked them in their exaggerated state. Thus, Hopkins/"19" is called the "linchpin" of my book, which is nonsense as dispatched in Part Two of The Rebuttal.

While it is not the linchpin of my book  indeed, I could cut out all reference to it and make the same case  Hopkins/"19" may be seen as the linchpin of the war on American Betrayal.

Having over-inflated the significance of Hopkins/”19” in my book (two pages) to a point of absurdity, Radosh sets out to take down Hopkins/”19” as a standing argument. This included negating the 1998 Mark research paper that gave rise to Hopkins/"19."

First, Radosh cites historians John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, whose research identifies "19" as Soviet agent Laurence Duggan. Haynes and Klehr base their argument on the many identifications Alexander Vassiliev found in KGB documents known as "the Vassiliev notebooks" linking the codename "19" to Soviet agent Duggan into the 1940s. Eduard Mark, on the other hand, constructed his "19" theory based on meeting lists and appointment books to ascertain what officials had access to the tiny, high-level presidential meeting under discussion. (Mark had weighed Duggan/"19" i.d.'s of the 1930s into his 1998 calculations but dismissed Duggan as a possibility for reasons listed in his footnote below.[12])

Then Radosh went farther still.

He describes a dramatic scene at a gathering of espionage experts and authors he, Radosh, in part presided over at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC in 2009. Among the assembly were M. Stanton Evans, John Earl Haynes, Harvard's Mark Kramer, Eduard Mark (d. 2009) Herbert Romerstein (d. 2013), and Alexander Vassiliev.

In this company, Radosh writes, Mark “publicly” recanted his 1998 findings that identified Hopkins as “19.”

Radosh:

At a conference on Soviet espionage held a week before his untimely death, West’s source, Eduard Mark, publicly stated that he now acknowledged that Harry Hopkins was not Agent 19, and that the conclusion he had reached in his 1998 article was false.”

In Part Two of The Rebuttal, I flag a discrepancy in the record. I compare Radosh's August 7, 2013 statement — Mark recanted his thesis — with what he wrote me in an email two months earlier on June 13, 2013.

Addressing the same topic — Hopkins/"19" vs. Duggan/"19" — Radosh wrote me:

Were Mark still alive, I’m certain he would have conceded the point.”

What was that again?

Were Mark still alive, I'm certain he would have conceded the point.

On August 7, 2013, Radosh describes Mark's public recantation of his thesis in 2009. Mark died the following week.

But in June 13, 2013, Radosh is speculating that "were Mark still alive," he would have recanted his thesis.

Both statements cannot be true.

Here is the full email of June 13, 2013:

Diana,

Re what Bostom says about Hopkins is wrong, and if it is from your book, it is also incorrect.

Here's what John Haynes just e-mailed me:

"Ed Mark was wrong about 19. Harvey and I always treated 19 as unknown. Mark was sure he an eliminated all of the possibilities and Hopkins was the last man standing. I disagreed with him and told him he was putting too much faith in his analysis of who was at various Trident conference social events. I thought he might be right but that the evidence was just too thin to reach a conclusion, even a tentative one. This was prior to AV's notebooks [Alexander Vassiliev's notebooks of hand-copied KGB cables]. When AV's notebooks came out, 19 was repeatedly identified as Laurence Duggan."

The Vassiliev papers show conclusively that Larry Duggan was 19, not Hopkins. So while Hopkins might have been pro-Soviet, as others were, and naive and a fellow-traveler, he was not an agent.

One has to be meticulous and careful when making charges, and very careful about consulting the most authoritative sources. Were Mark still alive, I'm certain he would have conceded the point. He was a careful scholar for the most part.

Ron

It's hard not to linger a little over the undercutting tone of that final encomium to Mark, but the fact remains that as of June 13, 2013, Radosh and John Earl Haynes both are writing as if Mark's 1998 thesis is still intact. In other words, there is not any indication, not a whisper, about Marks' 2009 before-death public recantation that Radosh reports in his August review.

It is also worth pointing out that Haynes similarly treated the Mark thesis as current in a January 2013 essay he posted here. In this essay, Haynes argues that “19” was Laurence Duggan, not Harry Hopkins as Mark's 1998 paper argued. Discussing Mark, Haynes wrote: “But on the matter of Venona 812 he and I disagreed.”

Note that he didn’t say, “On the matter of Venona 812, he and I disagreed until Mark publicly recanted his paper’s findings in 2009.”

I asked John Earl Haynes for any further information he could offer about what transpired at the 2009 conference. Here is an excerpt from his August 16 email. (Full email exchange below.)

At the symposium Ed did mention briefly in one of the Q&A sessions that he no longer held to his view that "19" was Hopkins.

Haynes' account corroborates Radosh, although his rendition lacks the drama of the scene as Radosh set it up.

Haynes:

I remember the [Eduard Mark] remark but don't specifically remember at which session it was, but Professor Mark Kramer of Harvard's Cold War Center remembered Ed's remark very clearly, that it was at a session of the symposium he chaired, and that he and Ed had a further discussion of the matter when they walked together to the Metro after the symposium ended.

Enter Harvard Professor Mark Kramer. As Haynes recounts via Kramer's recollection, Kramer chaired a session of the 2009 conference during which Kramer remembers "very clearly" Mark's remark, and, further, that Kramer and Mark continued the discussion en route to the Metro.

Orange line or Blue?

Haynes:

Kramer says Ed said that the material in the notebooks convinced him that he had been wrong (never an easy thing for a historian to say, at least not for me, though I have done so). But then Ed died unexpectedly shortly after the symposium, so he never published anything on his changed view.

Frankly, Ed's remarks in 2009 do not strike me as very central to the issue of who was "19." Vassiliev's notebooks establish without equivocation that "19" in Venona 812 was Duggan.

That may be. But "Ed's remarks" are "very central" indeed to the Radosh "take-down" (his word) of American Betrayal. Why? Radosh made them that way, and they were subsequently amplified and extended.

Coincidentally, Haynes and Klehr published an article on August 16, the day I exchanged emails with John Haynes. The article lays out their findings regarding Duggan and "19." A footnote included the following:

“During one of the question-and-answer periods and in informal conversations at the [2009] symposium Mark remarked that the Vassiliev notebooks had convinced him that `19’ was Duggan and he no longer held to his 1998 position. He died unexpectedly shortly after the symposium and, consequently, never published a formal statement on the matter."

Here we see the very specific Mark recantation — reported for the first time, I believe, by Radosh in his August 7 review of my book — enter the scholarship via Haynes and Klehr on August 16.

And yet on June 13, Radosh emailed me:

Were Mark still alive, I feel certain he would have conceded the point.

The plot thickens.

Actually, Radosh thickens it himself by next writing a comment on the Frontpage website and then emailing it me.

On August 17, Radosh emailed me (unsolicited, as usual):

I have just posted the following at FrontPage Magazine in response to Andrew Bostom's query, as well as the one you made in your e-mail to John Haynes:

Since I wrote directly to Haynes, I can assume Haynes shared my email with Radosh.

What follows is a copy of Radosh's comment to Andrew Bostom as posted by Radosh at Frontpage Magazine.

Ron Radosh Andrew Bostom • a few seconds ago −

In answer to Andrew G. Bostom's query, as well as that by Diana West, let me shed light on this.

The reason you did not find it on any C-Span video is that the network did not tape the entire proceedings. The long afternoon panel and another one were not recorded. At the time, a number of us commented how upset we were that they did not choose to film the very important afternoon panel in particular.

More to the point, I am now quoting the e-mail I and others received from Mark Kramer, the editor of The Journal of Cold War Studies, and Program Director at the Project on Cold War Studies, Harvard University, and Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Kramer wrote me the following on August 16th:• a few seconds ago

—

"Ron, I can definitely confirm it.

I was chairing the session, and Ed intervened when Stan Evans referred to Harry Hopkins as No. 19. Ed said "The Vassiliev notebooks show that this isn't true. I thought it was, but it isn't. When I found out that I'm wrong, I'm willing to admit it." I talked about this with Ed after the session, as he and I were heading for the metro station."

Others, including me, remember this quite well.

Signed:

Ronald Radosh

New information!

According to the definite confirmation of Mark Kramer — the editor of The Journal of Cold War Studies, and Program Director at the Project on Cold War Studies, Harvard University, and Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University — M. Stanton Evans "referred to Harry Hopkins as No. 19" and Eduard Mark "intervened."

M. Stanton Evans? How did he enter into this? True, he was at the 2009 conference, but Evans has categorically, emphatically rejected Kramer and Radosh's characterization of his actions, writing: "I had no such encounter with Eduard Mark about Harry Hopkins, No. 19, or anything whatever...The supposed recollections of Kramer and Radosh about my part in all of this are totally mistaken." (See Evans’ exchange of memos on this matter with John Haynes here.)

If we remove Evans from the equation, we still must consider Kramer and Radosh's faulty memories. With that sinking feeling, then, here's the evidence as amassed as of August 16, 2013 by Radosh, Haynes, Klehr and Kramer.

1)    Radosh's initial statement that Mark publicly recanted as "false" the findings of his 1998 Hopkns/"19" paper (Radosh, August 7).

2)    A footnote to that effect in a paper by leading historians (Haynes and Klehr, August 16).

3)    A recollection by Harvard Cold War Studies Program Director Mark Kramer of Marks' verbatim quotation (published August 17). As Kramer recalls Mark saying (after Kramer mistakenly recalled Evans's non-discussion of "19"): "The Vassiliev notebooks show that this isn't true. I thought it was, but it isn't. When I found out that I'm wrong, I'm willing to admit it."

4)    Radosh adds that he, among others, remembers this "quite well."

Then I can't explain how this slipped Radosh's mind when he wrote me on June 13:

Were Mark still alive, I'm certain he would have conceded the point.

I would receive a few more "collegial" emails from Radosh. "Conrad Black tears you apart," for example, was one heart-warming entry in my in-box, also on August 16.

The last (unsolicited) email I received from Radosh came on August 19.

First, the "collegial" comment:

You should admit the truth and stop insulting us, Diana.

Then, for reasons known only to Radosh, he included in his email to me the following email of August 18 from Mark Kramer to Radosh and cc'd to John Haynes, Harvey Klehr and David Horowitz:

—-------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Mark Kramer

Date: Sun, Aug 18, 2013 at 2:16 PM

Subject: Re: my posted answer to Bostom

To: Ron Radosh

Cc: John Haynes, Harvey Klehr, David Horowitz

Yes, Ed made the comment as Evans was talking, but Evans just continued talking, evidently unaware (or at least not wanting to acknowledge) that he was being contradicted.

Back to that preposterous story about Evans again -- that Evans raised the issue of Hopkins and "19." Not true. (See Evans debunk it here.) Evans did not talk over Mark about Hopkins. So what happens to the rest of the Mark Hopkins/"19" recantation story as sourced to Harvard's Kramer?

Kramer:

I was unable to call on Ed because the session was already going too long and the WWICS had a reception scheduled. As Ed and I were walking to the metro afterward, I told him that I had wanted to have him speak but was worried that it would prompt further comments by Evans and Romerstein. So, I just called a halt.

Worry over "further comments by Evans and Romerstein" aside: Kramer, by his own admission, didn't call on "Ed." Kramer was "unable to."

As John pointed out yesterday, the focus on Ed's remarks is a red herring and is just an effort to divert attention from the actual substance of the matter, namely, the reams of evidence in Vassiliev's notebooks that 19 was Duggan. By implying that Ed wouldn't have changed his mind after seeing all this evidence, they're insulting him and giving the impression that he was a blind ideologue who would cover up evidence rather than admit he was mistaken. Ed was much too good a historian for that. Everyone who knew him well isn't at all surprised that he changed his mind (I certainly wasn't, as I told him). Best, Mark

The mind of a Harvard historian is a very complicated place.

Take a closer look at the August 18 Kramer email.

Yes, Ed made the comment as Evans was talking, but Evans just continued talking, evidently unaware (or at least not wanting to acknowledge) that he was being contradicted.

As noted above, Evans rejects in every way this description of his behavior as untrue. Indeed, the conference video shows Evans, in an entirely mannerly fashion, discussing Robert Oppenheimer and related matters  never Hopkins at all, and certainly not "19."

In fact, it was the late Herbert Romerstein, Evans' co-author-to-be, who discussed Hopkins at the 2009 conference. Romerstein invoked the renowned Soviet "illegal" spymaster Akhmerov's description of Hopkins as the greatest spy of all (see video here shortly after the 1:17 mark).

Romerstein, however, never mentioned "19."

There is video of Eduard Mark responding to a comment (almost certainly Romerstein's, although Mark is not specific) tagging Hopkins as a Soviet "agent." Mark strenuously rejects such talk as "disreputable."

Mark doesn't mention "19," either. (See video here at around the 1:29 mark.)

Could Mark's "19" recantation, as attested to by Radosh, Haynes, Klehr and Kramer, have taken place at some other time during the conference?

Perhaps. I haven't seen it in the hours of conference video I've been able to watch, but maybe some segments of the conference went untaped. (Radosh said that was the case.)

Meanwhile, however, It is hard not to notice a difference between Mark Kramer's August 16 and August 18 emails.

On August 16, Kramer emphatically writes:

"Ron, I can definitely confirm it.

I was chairing the session, and Ed intervened when Stan Evans referred to Harry Hopkins as No. 19.

Ed said "The Vassiliev notebooks show that this isn't true. I thought it was, but it isn't. When I found out that I'm wrong, I'm willing to admit it." I talked about this with Ed after the session, as he and I were heading for the metro station."

We go from "Ed said" on August 16, to Ed getting drowned out on August 18, and then not even called on!

Yes, Ed made the comment as Evans was talking, but Evans just continued talking, evidently unaware (or at least not wanting ato cknowledge) that he was being contradicted.

I was unable to call on Ed because the session was already going too long and the WWICS had a reception scheduled. As Ed and I were walking to the metro afterward, I told him that I had wanted to have him speak but was worried that it would prompt further comments by Evans and Romerstein. So, I just called a halt.

Does this match Radosh's August 7 description?

Radosh:

At a conference on Soviet espionage held a week before his untimely death, West’s source, Eduard Mark, publicly stated that he now acknowledged that Harry Hopkins was not Agent 19, and that the conclusion he had reached in his 1998 article was false.”

Or Haynes and Klehr's footnote account?

Haynes and Klehr:

“During one of the question-and-answer periods and in informal conversations at the [2009] symposium Mark remarked that the Vassiliev notebooks had convinced him that `19’ was Duggan and he no longer held to his 1998 position.

Kramer's August 18 email continues:

As John pointed out yesterday, the focus on Ed's remarks is a red herring and is just an effort to divert attention from the actual substance of the matter, namely, the reams of evidence in Vassiliev's notebooks that 19 was Duggan.

By implying that Ed wouldn't have changed his mind after seeing all this evidence, they're insulting him and giving the impression that he was a blind ideologue who would cover up evidence rather than admit he was mistaken.

I don't know who is implying anything about Mark's mind except his own colleagues, who, in a matter of weeks in 2013, negated a deceased man's 1998 paper based on vague and changing recollections. One giant piece of the story (Evans's role) does not check out at all. Kramer's forthright account of August 16, complete with verbatim recantation quotation, two days later shrinks into a description of a stymied Mark, unsuccessfully attempting to speak (that droning Stan Evans ....). Kramer himself admits he was "unable to call on" Mark.

Does that sound like this?

Radosh, August 7:

Eduard Mark, publicly stated that he now acknowledged that Harry Hopkins was not Agent 19, and that the conclusion he had reached in his 1998 article was false.”

Radosh, circa June 13:

Were Mark still alive, I'm certain he would have conceded the point.

And the moral of this story?

Pity the poor facts in the hands of historians.

* * * * *

Here is my email exchange with John Earl Haynes of August 16, 2013

1)

Dear John Haynes,

I am currently engaged in the task of a rebutting a lengthy book review, "McCarthy on Steroids," which includes many insupportable allegations  even anecdotes, sources, arguments that are not to be found in my book.

Just so you know, contrary to the editors' note that sits above the review at FPM, if you have seen it, I didn't refuse to reply to this review, I refused to reply at FPM due to the fact that the editor had earlier removed from the website a positive review of my book. My rebuttal will run elsehwere.

Anyway, that's just one awkwardness to overcome before I ask you my question.

In the review, Radosh repeats that I "attack" you and Harvey Klehr and other historians and your scholarship. I assure you, I did no such thing, nor would I ever want to do any such thing. If this weren't so deadly serious, it would be laughable. But none of this is laughable.

The matter I would like to ask you about concerns the following statement from the review.

Radosh writes:

"At a conference on Soviet espionage held a week before his untimely death, West’s source, Eduard Mark, publicly stated that he now acknowledged that Harry Hopkins was not Agent 19, and that the conclusion he had reached in his 1998 article was false."

I have not yet been able to find evidence of this.

The link Radosh provides is a conference schedule. I found the 2009 paper on Hiss by Mark, but it does not contain such a statement. I have watched almost all of the 3-hr, May 20, 2009 conference video provided by the Wilson Center and haven't yet heard such a statement from Mark. I notice also that as recently as your January 2013 statement on the Duggan/19 issue, you write "on the matter of Venona 812 he [Mark] and I disagreed."

Unfortunately, Mark is not with us to settle the matter of whether in 2009 he publicly stated, as Radosh writes, "the conclusion he had reached in his 1998 article was false."

Any information or leads you might be able to provide on this matter would be appreciated.

Best wishes,

Diana West

2)

On Aug 16, 2013, at 2:42 PM, John Haynes wrote:

Dear Ms. West:

Ed Mark was a colleague and friend of mine. He often stopped by my office at the Library of Congress (I'm now retired) to discuss our mutual interest in espionage and Cold War history.

When Klehr and I were preparing our Venona book, Ed was working on his essay on Venona 812 and "19." We discussed the message a number of times, and Ed even asked Klehr and I to comment on his draft. We told him that while we were impressed by his argument, we still thought the evidence was too weak to sustain his conclusion. Ed was confident and went ahead with his essay. In our Venona book, however, Klehr and I, while making note of Ed argument, continued to regard "19" as unidentified.

There was no acrimony between us on this matter, we simply disagreed. Indeed, when Alexander Vassiliev's notebooks came into our hands, our regard for Ed's historical skills was such that he was one of the specialists we gave copies to a year before the notebooks were made public. While Klehr and I were preparing an overall book on the notebooks, what became our 2009 book Spies, these specialists prepared articles focused on particular subjects. In Ed's case it was Alger Hiss, and his 2009 paper, later an article in the Journal of Cold War Studies, was based on Vassiliev's notebooks.

As for the "19" matter, there is ample material in Vassiliev's notebooks on "19." He was Laurence Duggan. Klehr and I have a long section in Spies about Duggan and note his cover name as "19." (He also had other cover names.) Although Ed was focused on the Hiss matter in the run-up to the 2009 symposium, when I gave him the notebooks I mentioned to him that there was material on "19" in the notebooks. This was not a total surprise to Ed. In 1999 Weinstein and Vassiliev's book, The Haunted Wood, had come out and there were references in it to Duggan with the cover name "19" in the 1930s. Ed and I had discussed that when The Haunted Wood, came out. Ed's assumption/hope was that "19" was Duggan only in the 30s and his conclusion about "19" in 1943 was still possible. Once the notebooks were available, however, it was clear Duggan retained that cover name until August 1944.

When I gave Ed the notebooks I assumed he would review the entries on "19" even though he was focused on Hiss We were both busy in this period, me with getting Spies ready and Ed with his Hiss essay, and when we met we were usually discussed Hiss, a major concern to both of us. "19" never came up. At the symposium Ed did mention briefly in one of the Q&A sessions that he no longer held to his view that "19" was Hopkins. I remember the remark but don't specifically remember at which session it was, but Professor Mark Kramer of Harvard's Cold War Center remembered Ed's remark very clearly, that it was at a session of the symposium he chaired, and that he and Ed had a further discussion of the matter when they walked together to the Metro after the symposium ended. Kramer says Ed said that the material in the notebooks convinced him that he had been wrong (never an easy thing for a historian to say, at least not for me, though I have done so). But then Ed died unexpectedly shortly after the symposium, so he never published anything on his changed view.

Frankly, Ed's remarks in 2009 do not strike me as very central to the issue of who was "19." Vassiliev's notebooks establish without equivocation that "19" in Venona 812 was Duggan. I regret that this has become a point in contention, but Klehr and I have firm views on this and will be posting an essay laying out the evidence is that "19" was  Duggan and not Hopkins. Of course, Hopkins could not be "19" and still be a Soviet agent. While we do not totally dismiss that possibility, in our view the evidence is insufficient to make that assertion.

John Haynes

3)

Dear Mr. Haynes,

Thank you for your reply, which I will again more carefully.

I hope that one day you have a chance to examine the rest of the dossier on Hopkins that is in my book. The debate over "19" is in fact only one piece of what I have pulled together.

All best wishes,

Diana West

# # #

[1] http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/30/Horowitz-to-conservatives-fight-fire

[2] The Rebuttal first appeared on Breitbart.com in three installments.

[3] http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2013/07/08/mark-tapson-on-diana-wests-american-betrayal/

[4] http://frontpagemag.com/2013/david-horowitz/editorial-our-controversy-with-diana-west/

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/08/15/What-Difference-Does-It-Make-A-Response-to-Diane-West

[5] http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/demagogic_writers_and_the_people_who_love_them.html

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/08/the_beginning_of_wisdom.html

[6] http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2013/08/07/why-i-wrote-a-take-down-of-diana-wests-awful-book/

[7] http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ron-radosh/diana-wests-attempt-to-respond/

[8] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3620700/Necessary-or-not-Dresden-remains-a-topic-of-anguish.html

[9] http://gatesofvienna.net/2013/08/on-reading-the-book/#comment-144666

Marten Gantelius on August 17, 2013 at 9:11 pm wrote this:

I am Swedish, and I have no intention of reading “American Betrayal”. But I didn’t have to read very much of the review of Mr Radosh to conclude that Ms West’s book is a very important and competent work. And it’s obvious that a book with that magnitude is not written by itself.

“How on earth can the man do that?”, is a very relevant question. Well, analyzing language has been my profession throughout many years. Before I regard the content of a text, I look for what I call “The Language of Violence” in the text and watch the methods used (The last thing is nothing new. Descartes did the same.).

A very common method is to aggressively attack a detail in a text – of course with the intention to disturb the holistic impression. In this case – Hopkins.

My point with this post is to focus on the role of Mr Radosh. All authors – except some very few of them – are very vurnerable regarding reviews when their books are published. I am sure the history of our gutters includes many brilliant poets.

Mr Radosh used all his power, knowledge, experience and contacts with one single purpose – to behead Ms West.

[10] Here is a partial list from which I draw my Hopkins dossier following mention of Venona “19”:

·   George Racey Jordan, From Major Jordan’s Diaries (Harcourt, Brace, 1952);

·   John R. Deane, The Strange Alliance: The Story of
Our Efforts at Wartime Cooperation with Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), 94–95.

·   Hearings Regarding Shipments of Atomic Material to the Soviet Union During World War II (Washington: GPO, 1950), 909–10; Jordan, Diaries, 21.

·   Lord Moran, Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 41, 108,
499–500.

·   George T. Eggleston, Roosevelt, Churchill, and the World War II Opposition: A Revisionist Autobiography
(Old Greenwich, CT: Devin-Adair, 1980), 155.

·   Robert Sherwood, The White House Papers of Harry L. Hopkins: An Intimate History, vol. 2, January 1942–
July 1945 (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1949), 634–35.

·   Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and Shield.

·   Victor Kravchenko, I Chose Justice (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950), 76.

·   Martin Dies’ Story by Martin Dies

·   White, Report on the Russians, 124.

·   Albert L. Weeks, Russia’s Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the USSR in World War II (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 25.

·   Hanson Baldwin, Great Mistakes of the War (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 9.

·   Chesly Manly, The Twenty-Year Revolution from Roosevelt to Eisenhower (Chicago: Regnery, 1954), 113.

·   Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, Venona Secrets

·   Letter by Special Messenger from J. Edgar Hoover to Harry Hopkins, May 7, 1943

·   Victor Suvorov, The Chief Culprit: Stalin’s Grand Design to Start World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008), 114–20. Suvorov argues that this military defeat stymied further Japanese aggression toward the USSR.

·   William H. Standley and Arthur A. Ageton, Admiral Ambassador to Russia (Chicago: Regnery, 1955), 221–35.

·   Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995),
96–100.

·   Robert Murphy, Diplomat among Warriors: The Unique World of a Foreign Service Expert (New York, Doubleday, 1964), 256.

·   George McJimsey, Harry Hopkins: Ally of the Poor and Defender of Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard Uni- varsity Press, 1987), 360.

·   FRUS, The Tehran Conference, Roosevelt-Stalin Secret Meeting, December 1, 1943, 594. Martin Weil notes FDR’s general political concerns about Senate ratification of the United Nations in A Pretty Good Club: The Founding Fathers of the U.S. Foreign Service (New York: Norton, 1978), 180.

·   Vassiliev, “Yellow Notebook No. #4, File 40935, Vol. 1, The US Government,” viewable online at http://www.scribd.com/doc/84608440/Alexander-Vassiliev-Papers-Yellow-Notebook-No-4 -Translation.

·   Edward Jay Epstein, Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer (New York: Random House, 1996), 135–56.

·   Transcript of Tape 10, of conversations between Forrest Pogue and George C. Marshall, recorded January 22, 1957, 319.

·   Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), 287.

·   Bryton Barron, Inside the State Department (New York: Comet Press, 1956

·   Peter B. Niblo, Influence: The Soviet “Task” Leading to Pearl Harbor, the Iron Curtain, and the Cold War (Elderberry Press, Oregon), 2002.

·   Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedermeyer Reports! (New York: Holt, 1958),

·   Newsweek, December 19, 1949, quoted in Jordan’s 1950 congressional testimony, 1169.

·   Dennis J. Dunn, Caught Between Roosevelt and Stalin, 93.

·   M. Stanton Evans, Blacklisted by History, 2007

[11] M. Stanton Evans, Blacklisted by History. The chapter is called, “What Hoover Told Truman.”

[12] Footnote 53 from "Venona Source 19 and the Trident Conference," by Eduard Mark. Intelligence and National Security 13:2, 1-31: During the 1930s Duggan had been known to the NKVD as 19. Duggan, however, is not a candidate for the 19 of 1943 because he did not meet with Roosevelt or Churchill for any purpose, let alone both, to discuss the Second Front Duggan's source for high-level information, moreover, was Wallace (see note 52) who himself did not know the plans for the Second Front Wallace's appointment book, finally, shows that between 12 May and 29 May (the date of Message 812's composition) Wallace met Duggan but once - briefly on the morning of 22 May, two days before the luncheon of 24 May which appears reflected in Message No. 812. For Duggan's having been known to the Soviets as 19 in the 1930s, see Allen Weinstein, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, rev. ed. (NY: Random House 1997) p.183.

Table of Contents

AUTHOR’S NOTE

PART ONE

PREFACE

RADOSH’S INTRODUCTION

PART TWO

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

PART THREE

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Commentary from the Blogosphere

M. Stanton Evans

Harry Hopkins, Diana West and Me

In Defense of Diana West

Vladimir Bukovsky & Pavel Stroilov

Why Academics Hate Diana West

Appendix 1: ‘Mightier Pen’ Award

Appendix 2: Chronology of Attacks

Warning: Historians at Work