Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (37 page)

KGB archival documents tell a different story. The first mention of
Stone comes in a KGB New York station report of 13 April 1936 noting
"`Pancake' (`Liberal's' lead)-Isidor Feinstein, a commentator for the
New York Post." "Liberal" was Frank Palmer, part of the same New York
community of pro-Communist radical journalists as Stone. He had also
been an agent of the KGB New York station for several years, and this
note indicated that Palmer had suggested to his bosses that they look at
Isidor Feinstein (as Stone was then known). The New York station further
reported in May 1936: "Relations with "Pancake" [Stone] have entered
`the channel of normal operational work.' He went to Washington on assignment for his newspaper. Connections in the State Dep. and Congress." By stating that its relationship with Stone had entered "`the
channel of normal operational work,"' the KGB New York station was reporting that Stone was a fully active agent. Over the next several years,
documents recorded in Vassiliev's notebooks make clear, Stone worked
closely with the KGB.'

Stone assisted Soviet intelligence on a number of tasks, ranging from
doing some talent spotting, acting as a courier by relaying information to
other agents, and providing private journalistic tidbits and data the KGB
found interesting. In May 1936, for example, the KGB New York station
told Moscow: " "Pancake" [Stone] reported that Karl Von Wiegand works
in Berlin as a correspondent for the Hearst agency `Universal Service.' He
had been ordered to maintain friendly relations with Hitler, which was
supposedly dictated by the fact that the German press was buying the
agency's information. Hearst is in a deal with German industry to supply
the latter with a large consignment of copper. Wiegand does not agree
with Hearst's policy. He turned to Pancake's boss for advice." Commenting on Stone's work as a KGB talent spotter and recruiter, the KGB New
York station reported: ""Pancake" established contact with Dodd. We wanted to recruit him and put him to work on the State Dep. line. "Pancake" should tell Dodd that he has the means to connect him with an
anti-Fascist organization in Berlin." William A. Dodd, Jr., was the son of
the U.S. ambassador to Germany and an aspiring Popular Front activist
with political ambitions. The KGB did recruit him, and Stone briefly
functioned as his intermediary with the KGB, providing him with a contact in Berlin when he went to join his father at the embassy. Stone also
passed on to the KGB Dodd's information, picked up from the American
military attache, about possible German military moves against the USSR
and the name of a suspected pro-Nazi embassy employee.9

There is only one additional reference to I. F. Stone's cooperation
with the KGB in the 1930s, a note listing him as one of the New York station's agents in late 1938. The next reference to Stone was a 1944 KGB
report on Victor Perlo, head of a network of Soviet sources in Washington during World War II; it noted, "In 1942-43, R. ["Raid"/Perlo] secretly helped "Pancake" [Stone] compile materials for various exposes by
the latter." (Perlo was at that time a mid-level economist at the Advisory
Council of National Defense.) Similarly, a 1945 report about Stanley
Graze, a secret Communist and a valued KGB source, noted that in 1943
Graze's wife had been ""Pancake's' [Stone's] personal secretary, maintaining ties with the latter's informants in government agencies."' These
1944 and 1945 notes do not indicate that Stone was an active KGB agent
or even in direct contact with it after 1938, and given Stone's initial anger
over the Nazi-Soviet Pact, it is likely that he broke relations with the KGB
in late 1939. Still, Stone had quickly reverted to a pro-Soviet position and,
as his links to Victor Perlo and Mrs. Stanley Graze demonstrate, remained
in intimate touch with the Communist underground in Washington in
World War II and continued to be viewed by the KGB in a benign light.ro

In this context, Vladimir Pravdin's October 1944 approach to Stone
noted above was not an initial recruitment attempt but an effort to
reestablish the agent relationship that the KGB had had in 1936-38. It
is still not completely clear if this attempt was successful or not. There is
only one other document in Vassiliev's notebooks that bears on this question. The Soviets knew little about Harry Truman when he succeeded to
the presidency, and in June 1945 Moscow Center told Pravdin, then chief
of the New York KGB station, "`Right now the cultivation of Truman's
inner circle becomes exceptionally important. This is one of the Station's
main tasks. To fulfill this task, the following agent capabilities need to be
put to the most effective use: 1. In journalistic circles-"Ide," "Grin,"
"Pancake" ... "Bumblebee." Through these people focus on covering the principal newspaper syndicates and the financial-political groups that are
behind them; their relationships with Truman, the pressure exerted on
him, etc."' Of the four journalists listed, "Ide"/Samuel Krafsur and
"Grin"/John Spivak were unambiguously recruited KGB agents. However, "Bumblebee"/Walter Lippmann was not a KGB agent. Instead, he
knew Pravdin only as a Soviet journalist with whom he traded insights
and information. As for Stone, given Pravdin's effort to rerecruit him in
1944, he could not have been under the illusion that the Soviet was a normal journalist. Still, with Lippmann's inclusion in the list, this message is
ambiguous in regard to Stone's relationship to the KGB at that time and
does not have enough detail to warrant a firm conclusion."

It is clear that Stone consciously cooperated with Soviet intelligence
from 1936 through i938-that is to say, lie was a Soviet spy-but it is unclear if lie reestablished that relationship in 1944-45. That Stone chose
never to reveal this part of his life strongly suggests that lie knew just how
incompatible it would be with his public image as a courageous and independent journalist. His admirers, who have so strenuously denied even
the possibility of such an alliance, need to reevaluate his life and reconsider some of the choices lie made.

The mere fact that Ernest Hemingway toyed with Soviet intelligence is
one of the more surprising revelations in the KGB files. Although the future Nobel Prize winner never provided any significant information to
the KGB, he was in contact with several of its agents for a few years and
remained an object of interest into the 1950s.

While principally a novelist, Hemingway also wrote as a journalist,
providing topical essays and reports on contemporary events that appeared in newspapers and magazines. After the Spanish Civil War broke
out, lie traveled to Madrid with press credentials from the North American Newspaper Alliance to cover the conflict. Once there, he grew close
to the Communist movement and cooperated with party front organizations in the aftermath of the war. Although the CPUSA was unhappy with
his portrayal of International Brigades' chief Andre Marty in the novel
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway's fame and willingness to cooperate on selected issues ensured that lie remained close to the CPUSA.

Early in 1941 Hemingway and his new wife, Martha Gellhorn, were
preparing to leave for a trip to China. Gellhorn had secured an assignment from Colliers magazine, and Hemingway reluctantly agreed to ac company her. The left-wing newspaper PM contracted to run his stories.
More significant, Hemingway spoke to Harry White, chief of the Treas-
my Department's Monetary Division, who asked him to report secretly to
him on relations between the Chinese Communists and the Kuomintang,
the Chinese transportation system, and the condition of the Burma Road.
Hemingway agreed. During his four-month odyssey, he met with Lauchlin Currie (White House aide on a mission in China) at a dinner in Hong
Kong, interviewed Nationalist China's leader Chiang Kai-Shek and his
wife in Chungking, and met secretly with Communist leader Chou EnLai. Upon his return he wrote reports for White and met with an official
in the Office of Naval Intelligence. A later historical account of the trip
noted that if White really was a Soviet spy, "Hemingway's information
very well could have ended up in the Kremlin. "12

White assuredly was a Soviet source (see chapter 4), but any link with
Soviet intelligence Hemingway might have had through White would
have been indirect and unknowing. What has not been previously known,
however, is that Hemingway had been in direct contact with Soviet intelligence before leaving for China. Moscow Center received a report
from Jacob Golos, the KGB's liaison with the CPUSA, stating: "`A few
days ago I found out that Ernest Hemingway is traveling to China via the
Soviet Union. He may apply for an entry visa to the Soviet Union. He
was in New York for only one day and I couldn't meet with him. I
arranged with him that our people will meet with him in China and show
him the stamps that he gave us. We must attempt to meet with him in
China or the Soviet Union by using the password that was arranged with
him previously. I am sure that he will cooperate with us and will do everything he can."' Golos didn't state who arranged the password and picked
up the stamps that Hemingway handed over. (One possibility would be
John Herrmann, an old Hemingway drinking buddy and friend who had
himself worked for the CPUSA underground in Washington for several
years in the 1930s .)13

Although there is no evidence that Hemingway did any actual work
for the KGB, his brushes with the clandestine world were apparently intoxicating. He remained infatuated with espionage for the next several
years. Upon returning to Cuba, he organized a crew of his drinking and
fishing pals and former Spanish Civil War veterans to spy on pro-German elements on the island, even obtaining some funds from the American ambassador to pay for the operation. Later derisively named "the
Crook Factory" by Gellhorn, this motley crew outfitted a fishing boat with
light weapons and trawled offshore looking for U-boats. While it afforded the writer an opportunity to indulge in fantasies that he was a secret operative, J. Edgar Hoover (then supervising American intelligence in Central and South America) was not impressed, telling subordinates that
Hemingway was "the last man, in my estimation, to be used in any such
capacity. "14

Moscow was more hopeful. Hemingway received a cover name,
"Argo," and in November 1941 Moscow Center instructed the KGB New
York station: "`Look for an opportunity for him to travel abroad to countries of interest to us."' Hemingway met with KGB officers four more
times, and Moscow remained hopeful. But as a KGB summary of 1948
shows, J. Edgar Hoover's dismissal of Hemingway as a dilettante would
have been better advised:

"`Argo'-Ernest Hemingway (Ernest Hemingway), year of birth: 1898, born in
Duke Park, Illinois (USA), American citizen, secondary education, a writer.
During the First War of Imperialism, he was a correspondent in the French
and Italian armies' medical units.

In 1937, while in Spain, `Argo' wrote in defense of the Popular Front in
his articles and appealed for help for Republican Spain, sharply criticizing isolationists in Congress and the U.S. State Department. `Argo' insisted that the
U.S. lift the embargo on the importation of arms into Repub. Spain....

In 1941, before he left for China, `Argo' was recruited for our work on ideological grounds by `Sound.' Contact was not established with `Argo' in China.
In Sept. 1943, when `Argo' was in Havana, where he owned a villa, our worker
contacted him and, prior to his departure for Europe, met with him only
twice. In June 1943, the connection with `Argo' was once more renewed in
London, where he had gone as an Amer. correspondent with the Allied Army
in the field for the magazine `Colliers.' This connection was soon interrupted,
b/c `Argo' left for France. When `Argo' returned to Havana from France in
April 1945, we met with him once. We could not maintain a connection with
`Argo' in view of our worker's urgent summons out of the country. Since then,
there have been no attempts to establish a connection with `Argo.'

Our meetings with `Argo' in London and Havana were conducted with the
aim of studying him and determining his potential for our work. Throughout
the period of his connection with us, `Argo' did not give us any polit. information, though he repeatedly expressed his desire and willingness to help us.
`Argo' has not been studied thoroughly and is unverified. We have a material
password for renewing ties with `Argo."'

(The "material password" would have been the stamps Hemingway earlier
gave Golos.) Despite all these meetings and promises of cooperation since
1941 Hemingway had actually delivered nothing as of 1948. In light of this, sensibly, the American station listed Hemingway in 1949 as among earlier
American sources with whom it had not renewed contact.'5

But that did not end the matter. In the late 1940s the combination of
crippling defections, the FBI's aggressive posture, and intense public hostility toward communism devastated the KGB's once flourishing espionage networks in America. In 1950 Moscow Center pressed its American station to look into renewing ties to agents and sources long ago
deactivated or abandoned as useless. One of these was Ernest Hemingway. In August it told the KGB Washington station: "`We remind you that
`Argo' was recruited for our work on ideological grounds in 1941 by
`Sound' but that he has been studied little and has not been verified in
practical work. We have a material recognition signal for renewing ties
with `Argo,' which we will send you in case the need should arise."' But
in October the New York station reported that although Hemingway continued to maintain ties with Joseph North, a CPUSA official active in the
party's cultural/intellectual work, "`It is said that he allegedly supports
the Trotskyites and that he has attacked the Sov. Union in his articles and
pamphlets."' After that nothing more about Hemingway appeared.'6

Ludwig Lore had been a prominent American Communist during the
early 192os. A native of Germany, he came to the United States in 1903
and by 1919 was executive secretary of the German branch of the Socialist Party and editor of New Yorker Volkszeitung, its newspaper. Converted to communism by Leon Trotsky in 1917, he was a member of the
first National Executive Committee of the Communist Labor Party, but
his colleagues considered him too moderate and removed him. As leader
of a faction of the Workers Party (as the CPUSA was then called), Lore
was attacked by Moscow as a Social Democrat and Trotsky supporter.
The party expelled him in 1925 for "Loreism," but he continued to regard
himself as an independent Communist and part of the broader radical
movement. He gave up his editorship of the Volkszeitung in 1931 to become a freelance journalist; in 1934 he joined the editorial staff of the
New York Post and wrote a daily column, "Behind the Cables." Lore's
column focused on foreign affairs (its title referring to Lore's promise to
provide the real story that lay behind the international cables that brought
foreign news to America) and emphasized the menace of Nazism to world
peace.''