By A.G. NOORANI
Alger Hiss was a spy after all, these books show. And Ernest Hemingway had meetings with KGB agents.
AFTER 9/11, the second oldest profession has had a rebirth. No invention of man can be a substitute for the spy in the field.
Varied are the motives that drive a person to espionage and treason. One is ideological – an alienation from the state and society so deep that the spy readily undertakes the risks to spy for another country.
The Cambridge Apostles, of which Anthony Blunt was a leading figure, is an outstanding example. Heretics became traitors. There is the mercenary spy who is liable to become a double agent. Personal reasons also drive persons to seek refuge in espionage. Some operate as mere couriers.
These two books are written by scholars, not propagandists, who draw on the archives of the Soviet Union. The scholar-journalist Susan Jacoby’s book is a work of reflection on the impact of smear campaigns and spy scares and the fragility of safeguards in such times when, as has happened recently in India, judges become super patriots and violate their oath of office.
John Earl Haynes, a historian in the Library of Congress and Professor Andrew Mellon of Emory University co-authored Venona. Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB officer, joins Haynes and Harvey Klehr to produce a tome on the KGB’s work in the United States.
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