Comments on: Book review: “Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America”

By: Jefferson Flanders

Jefferson Flanders — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:07:19 +0000

D.D. Guttenplan apparently didn’t read my review carefully, or the text of Spies. Here are the unfudged facts:

1. I wrote that “Spies does not accuse Stone of espionage” —and Spies makes clear that there is no evidence that Stone passed government secrets or documents to the Soviets (what is generally regarded as espionage), only that as a KGB agent he provided courier work, talent spotting, and general information. One can be an agent (a spy in general parlance), perform operational tasks, and still not be involved in espionage.

2. As to the question of operational control: Spies cites a key passage from a May 1936 KGB letter to Moscow: “Relations with Pancake have entered the channel of normal operational work.” (Pancake was the code named used for Stone). The KGB was tasking Stone with operational tasks and he was performing them–if this is not operational control, what is?

3. I’ve added the link to Guttenplan’s review into the text above. I did already have links to three critical reviews of Spies in the piece so I can hardly be accused of suppressing criticism.

4. Guttenplan knows that Alexander Vassiliev’s notebooks, which include material copied from the KGB archives, have been vetted by leading Cold War historians and, to date, no credible issues have been raised about their authenticity.

I haven’t suggested that Guttenplan is Stone’s hagiographer, but now that he mentions it….

Jefferson Flanders

By: mark

mark — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:54:01 +0000

Great to see a dissenting opinion. Hate to say it mr Flanders (or, should I just call you, Ned?) I’ll be checking sources, but my initial read is to check the text of your book at a library, rather than monetarily contributing to a gross case of blah.

By: msfreeh

msfreeh — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:43:01 +0000

to view a partial list of crimes committed by FBI agents over 1500 pages long see
http://www.forums.signonsandiego.com/showthread.php?t=59139

to view a partial list of FBI agents arrested for pedophilia see
http://www.dallasnews.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3574

By: D.D. Guttenplan

D.D. Guttenplan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:53:49 +0000

Jefferson Flanders’s credulous puff for the shoddy scholarship and McCarthyite smears in Spies would be more believeable if he didn’t fudge the facts. Spies does accuse Stone of being a spy; yet not even Klehr and Haynes claim the evidence suggests Stone was ever under Soviet “operational control.” And Alexander Vassiliev, the sole source for this so-called evidence, is a man who couldn’t even convince a British libel jury of his veracity. Readers who want to see what Flanders leaves out could read my review of Spies in the Nation ( http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090525/guttenplan/ )–a review, by the way, that was available long before Flanders wrote yet which he for some reason failed to link. Of course as Stone’s biographer (but not, I hope, his hagiographer) I have a point of view, but readers who want a more dispassionate account of Spies’ many deficiencies could read Amy Knight’s review in the current TLS (sadly unavailable on-line at present but well worth tracking down).