Early Cold War Spies The Espionage Trials that Shaped American Politics

Communism was never a popular ideology in America, but the vehemence of American anticommunism varied from passive disdain in the 1920s to fervent hostility in the early years of the Cold War. Nothing so stimulated the white hot anticommunism of the late 1940s and 1950s more than a series of spy trials that revealed that American Communists had co-operated with Soviet espionage against the United States and had assisted in stealing the technical secrets of the atomic bomb as well as penetrating the US State Department, the Treasury Department, and the White House itself. This book, first published in 2006, reviews the major spy cases of the early Cold War (Hiss-Chambers, Rosenberg, Bentley, Gouzenko, Coplon, Amerasia and others) and the often-frustrating clashes between the exacting rules of the American criminal justice system and the requirements of effective counter-espionage.

1. Introduction: early Cold War spy cases; 2. The precursors; 3. Elizabeth Bentley: the case of the blond spy queen; 4. The Alger Hiss - Whittaker Chambers case; 5. The atomic espionage cases; 6. Judith Coplon: the spy who got away with it; 7. The Soble-Soblen case: last of the early Cold War spy trials; 8. Conclusion: the decline of the ideological spy.

During the Cold War a series of spy trials revealed that American Communists had co-operated with Soviet espionage and assisted in stealing secrets of the atomic bomb as well as penetrating the White House. This 2006 book reviews these trials and the clashes between the American criminal justice system and counter-espionage.

John Earl Haynes is a 20th Century Political Historian in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He is the author or editor of four books: Calvin Coolidge and the Coolidge Era: Essays on the History of the 1920s (editor, 1998); Red Scare or Red Menace? American Communism and Anticommunism in the Cold War Era (1996); Communism and Anti-Communism in the United States: An Annotated Guide to Historical Writings (1987); and Dubious Alliance: The Making of Minnesota's DFL Party (1984).
Harvey Klehr is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Politics and History at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of five books, Communist Cadre: The Social Background of the American Communist Party Elite (1978); The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade (1984); Biographical Dictionary of the American Left (1986); Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today (1988); The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (1996). He was honored with the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award for Emory College in 1983.