The Rebuttal: Defending 'American Betrayal' From the Book-Burners (3 page)

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.”