Clever Girl

by Lauren Kessler

  Her life embodied deep contradictions, the most basic of which was that she was a good girl who had done wrong. Her loyalty to her principles and her loyalty to a man translated into disloyalty to her government. And then her awakened conscience—plus a healthy dose of fear and a sprinkling of revenge—turned her inside out again. Sinner and saint, villain and hero, traitor and patriot, she was one or the other, to the left or the right, for more than twenty years. To herself, she was both, and the dichotomy was as hard to escape as it was to live with.

  Contradictions were at the core of who she was. Her family had some of the deepest roots in America, yet she herself was rootless, a woman who never found a home or belonged to a place, geographic or spiritual. Brought up by straight-laced New Englanders to tread carefully in their sedate footsteps, she had an undeniable wild streak that led her someplace else entirely. She was an emotionally distant woman, yet she made a white-hot connection that changed her life. She was a woman who both craved attention and ran from it, who purposely sought the spotlight and then couldn’t stand the heat, who escaped into anonymity and then couldn’t stand the quiet.

  She was a woman who alternately gave up control—to the party, to alcohol, perhaps, even, to Golos—but who also fought fiercely, even recklessly, to keep it. She was an unwitting pawn, used by Hoover to consolidate his power, by anti–New Deal congressmen who wanted to bring down Truman and erase the Roosevelt legacy. Yet she also knew how to work the system, how to manipulate her new friends for her own purposes. Alternately helpless and indomitable, she could seem undone by life’s vicissitudes and yet always found a way to take care of herself.

  She was in many ways a woman ahead of her time, or perhaps a woman outside of time. She had little interest in domestic life. She never married or had children. She seldom sought the company or camaraderie of other women. She was a spy but no Mata Hari, a lover but no seductress, a teacher of children but no nurturer. Decade by decade, she ran counter to the stereotypes of both her gender and the times. In the 1920s, she was a quiet, bookish girl, not a “flaming youth.” In the early days of the Depression, she enjoyed the pleasures of Europe, not the realities of the breadline. In the 1940s, while thousands of other women worked in the war industries and waited for their men to come home, she worked against the government, undercover and underground, the secret lover of a secret agent. In the 1950s, while other women of her class propelled themselves into domestic life surrounded by the spoils of postwar prosperity, she lived alone in rented rooms and moved from job to job.

  Elizabeth Bentley was no feminist heroine. But she was a woman who lived life on her own terms, a woman who made her own way in the world. Without friends or family, without the ties that not only bind but support and strengthen, she fashioned and then refashioned a life. She refused to be ordinary. She refused to be intimidated. She was a troubled soul, but she refused to give in to her demons. Elizabeth Bentley was no victim. She was, for better or worse, the author of her own conflicted and tumultuous life.

  Acknowledgments

  WORKING ON THIS book brought me into contact with fascinating people I would never have otherwise known—surely one of the great joys of being a writer. From the octogenarian radicals who lived these times to the former FBI agents who monitored them, many people helped me tell this story.

  I owe an extraordinary debt to espionage expert and author Hayden Peake, former army intelligence officer, former CIA official, current curator of the Historical Intelligence Collection library at the CIA—and an open-minded, thoughtful, and truly generous man. He answered scores of questions, engaged in lively dialogue, challenged me to understand a diversity of views, sent me lists of books, and lent me important items from his private collection. Former FBI agent Robert Lamphere, author of The FBI-KGB War: A Special Agent’s Story, spent hours recounting these times for me. I am sorry that he did not live to see the publication of this book. I also want to especially acknowledge John Haynes, twentieth century political historian at the Library of Congress, and Harvey Klehr, Emory University political science professor, not only for the personal help they gave me fielding questions, locating documents, suggesting sources, and offering encouragement but also for the high standards they set with their own important work. Anyone who writes about or tries to understand this period is in their debt. This book would not have been possible without the extraordinary work of Allen Weinstein, president of The Center for Democracy, and his Russian colleague, Alexander Vassiliev, in the KGB archives.

  I want to thank the people who talked or corresponded with me, sharing their memories of the time and place I have tried to re-create here: Jack Beckerman, Herman Bly, Shirley Coddington, Hope Hale Davis, Merrill Golden, Dorothy Healey, Don Jardine, Dorothy Sanem Levitt, Anthony Litrento, Bud Rubin, Don Shannon, Katrina Smathers, Nathaniel Weyl, and Frank Wilkinson.

  In Connecticut, I had considerable help from Joan Wells, keeper of the Turrill family history; Carl DeMilia, reference librarian at the New Milford Public Library, who found important documents and kindly broke a few rules for me; and Liba Furman at the New Milford Times. At Vassar, I had help from special collections librarian Dean Rogers, registrar Dan Giannini, college historian Elizabeth Daniels, and Miss Sarah H. McLean (Class of 1930).

  Cleader McCoy-Brooks at the FBI FOIA reading room was both efficient and good-natured. Doug Macavey at Long Lane School, Sister Carolyn Farrell at Mundelein College, Betty Robin at Foxcroft School, and Roger Desmond in Hartford were all very helpful. I am indebted to Robert Roeker who, as a master’s student in the mid-1980s, singled out Elizabeth Bentley for study. Jane Marcellus and Jon Arakaki ably assisted with library research. Jackson Kessler Hager—my first-born son, who is all of a sudden both taller and smarter than me—lent important technical assistance, including digitizing many of the images reproduced in this book.

  A special place in biblio heaven is reserved for University of Oregon government documents librarian Tom Stave, who either knows everything or knows almost everything. I also want to acknowledge the experts who graciously allowed me to pick their brains: University of Oregon law professor and assistant dean Margie Paris, my on-call legal expert; Dr. Peter Kovach, my medical expert; David Weiss, my man in Manhattan; and Bonnie Mann, my authority on all things Louisiana.

  Special thanks to my high-octane agent, Sandy Dijkstra, for her unstinting support of my work, and to Babette Sparr for all her efforts on my behalf. I am much in debt to copy editor extraordinaire Olga Gardner Galvin, who corrected me (with utmost tact) in three languages. As for my editor, Julia Serebrinsky, I cannot adequately express my thanks—or my admiration. She is a writer’s dream, the most clear-eyed and yet kindest of critics, and, in the heart of commercial publishing, a true lover of ideas. Her support and encouragement have meant more to me than she knows (until now, of course). I owe her this book.

  Finally, and most profoundly, I thank Tom Hager, my sounding board, my research partner, my best and toughest first reader, my trusted colleague in all things literary and otherwise. His contributions to this book, and to my life, are immeasurable.

  Notes

  CHAPTER 1: CONNECTICUT YANKEE

  “surrounded by rolling farmlands”: The history of New Milford comes from “Our Town,” New Milford Gazette, Jan. 2, 1914; Doris Addis, “A Chronological History of New Milford” at www.nmhistorical.org; New Milford Trust for Historic Preservation and New Milford Chamber of Commerce brochures; and author’s interview with New Milford nonagenarian Merrill Golden, Sept. 27, 2000.

  “spinster named Mary Charlotte Turrill”: The name on birth and death certificates was Mary, but family genealogy records refer to her as May, as do some of her descendants. I have chosen to use Mary to avoid confusion with Charles Bentley’s sister, May Bentley. See Katherine Elizabeth Wells, Turrill-Wells Genealogy, pp. 56, 60; also author’s correspondence with Ruth Wells Stuhl, June 30, 2001. “Turrill” has been variously spelled Tyrrell and Terrill in family records.

  “born in
the summer of 1877”: The history of the Turrill family comes from Wells, Genealogy. See pp. 3–4, 12, 17–22, 26–28, 56, 59–60. Olmstead, Red Spy Queen, accuses Bentley of inventing the connection between Roger Sherman and her family to “add to the shock value of her autobiography.” If the connection was invented—which is unlikely—then the invention was part of family lore long before Bentley was born.

  “enrolling Choctaw and Sioux students”: Wells, Genealogy, pp. 56, 60. On Northfield School, see “Northfield Mount Hermon: Long a Champion of Diversity,” US News & World Report, May 14, 2001.

  “Mary Charlotte’s ancestor Roger Tyrrell”: Wells, Genealogy, pp. 4, 56.

  “the junior, but more active, partner”: Biographical material on Bentley from Record of Inhabitants of Morristown, New Jersey, June 13, 1870; Wells, Genealogy, p. 56; Two Centuries of New Milford, New Milford Historical Committee Bi-centennial Celebration, 1907; commentary by C. H. Booth in C. H. Booth & Bentley advertisement, New Milford Gazette, Dec. 28, 1900. Information on Booth & Bentley comes from various advertisements in New Milford Gazette, 1900–1910, and the Historic Resources Inventory, Connecticut Historical Commission.

  “they named Elizabeth Turrill Bentley”: Wells, Genealogy, pp. 56–57; Elizabeth Bentley’s birth recorded by State of Connecticut Bureau of Vital Statistics. Information on Terrace Place from author’s interview with Merrill Golden.

  “a healthy dose of advertising”: Information on Charles Bentley’s employment comes from New Milford city directories, 1900–1911; and the New Milford Times, Feb. 1914–June 1915.

  “a western Pennsylvania steeltown”: Roeker, “The Story of a Communist Agent,” pp. 4–5.

  “an old-fashioned New England upbringing”: Bentley notes her “overly stern New England upbringing” in Bentley, Out of Bondage, p. 69, and again in the 1944 autobiographical sketch she wrote for the NKVD, cited in Weinstein and Vassiliev, Haunted Wood, p. 88.

  “they’d make it that way?” Bentley recounts this conversation and discusses her mother’s experiences in McKeesport in Bentley, Out of Bondage, pp. 12–13.

  “the Golden Eaglet, in Girl Scouts”: Wells, Genealogy, p. 57.

  “an eighth grade teacher”: The Bentleys’ employment in Rochester is mentioned in May, Un-American Activities, p. 78, and by Roeker, p. 5.

  “both resolute and unhappy”: Information on Bentley at East High and the school itself comes from The Orient, East High School’s yearbook, 1926. Her senior picture is on p. 27. Additional information on Rochester comes from the good people at the local history desk of the Rochester Public Library.

  “a position teaching school, like her mother”: Bentley, Out of Bondage, p. 5.

  “enroll in the fall”: Vassar tuition noted by Elizabeth Daniels in “The History of Vassar College,” at www.vassar.edu. Scholarship information from the Vassar Student Handbook, 1926–1927, p. 42.

  CHAPTER 2: SAD SACK

  “an obligation to live a meaningful life”: “Convocation Opens Academic Year,” Vassar Miscellany News, Sept. 25, 1926, p. 1.

  “Vassar’s most famous and generous trustee, John D. Rockefeller”: The history of Vassar’s buildings is well documented in Daniels, From Main to Mudd.

  “life at Vassar for those who lived it fully”: Edna St. Vincent Millay, a student at Vassar twelve years before Bentley, certainly experienced it this way. Nancy Milford describes the Vassar atmosphere well in Savage Beauty (New York: Random House, 2001), pp. 107–130.

  “opportunities to write for the college newspaper, the college magazine, the yearbook”: Vassar rules, rituals, and activities are from the 1926–1927 Vassar Student Handbook, the 1930 Vassar yearbook, and various issues of the campus newspaper, the Vassar Miscellany News.

  “neither her junior nor her senior proms”: Elizabeth Bentley’s name appears in no issue of the Vassar Miscellany News for any of the four years she attended college. The names of girls involved in various activities, including attendance at dances and proms, were regularly published.

  “She excelled at nothing”: Elizabeth Bentley’s Vassar transcripts, 1926–1930, courtesy of the Vassar College Registrar.

  “didn’t have a single boyfriend”: Interview with Elizabeth Bliss conducted by Hayden Peake, Oct. 28, 1987 (notes graciously provided to the author by Mr. Peake).

  “full expression in the lecture halls on campus”: On McCracken, see Daniels, Main to Mudd, p. 9; Vassar Miscellany News, Nov. 6, 1926.

  “Scott Nearing lectured on Soviet Russia”: All reported in the Vassar Miscellany News and listed in the online history of Vassar at the college’s Web site.

  “student progressives, socialists and communists alike”: Vassar Student Handbook 1926–27, pp. 112–116.

  “not believing in anything”: Bentley makes this point in Out of Bondage, p. 14. Also see her congressional testimony in Communist Activities Among Aliens, May 13, 1949, p. 122.

  “a struggle against disease, dirt, poverty, and ignorance”: Reported in the Vassar Miscellany News, Oct. 6, 1928 and Feb. 9, 1929.

  “including those of Elizabeth Bentley”: Bentley, Out of Bondage, pp. 9, 15.

  “she enrolled in two more drama classes”: Background on Hallie Flanagan from author’s interview with Elizabeth Daniels, Oct. 23, 2000; Daniels, Bridges to the World, pp. 192, 197, 200, 202; Vassar Miscellany News, Jan. 15, 1927 and Nov. 16, 1927. Bentley discusses Flanagan’s influence in Out of Bondage, p. 15.

  “four months shy of her fifty-second birthday”: Mary Bentley death certificate, New York State Department of Health.

  “good education for these young women of Vassar”: Vassar yearbook 1930, p. 55.

  “a shipboard fling with a British engineer”: Noted by Bentley in her 1944 autobiography written for the NKGB. See Weinstein and Vassiliev, Haunted Wood, p. 88.

  “an aristocratic girls’ boarding school in Virginia”: FBI report [date illegible] No. 65-56402-25.

  CHAPTER 3: AWAKENINGS

  “a number of pillows and a clown’s red nose”: Information on Foxcroft and Bentley’s time there comes from Tally-Ho, the 1932 yearbook; author’s correspondence with school archivist, Betty Robin; Foxcroft catalogs and recruiting brochures and the school’s Web site, www.foxcroft.org.

  “He was an experience she had to have”: Bentley notes her amorous experiences in her 1944 autobiography written for the NKVD. See Weinstein and Vassiliev, Haunted Wood, p. 88.

  “that helped to pay tuition bills”: Bentley, Out of Bondage, p. 3.

  “sponsored by the Institute of International Education”: Information about Bentley’s graduate education is from her signed statement to the FBI, Nov. 30, 1945, p. 2, Bentley FBI file No. 65-56402-220. See also Roeker, The Story of a Communist Agent, p. 7, and Hayden Peake’s afterword in Bentley, Out of Bondage, 1988 edition, p. 224.

  “a naughty young woman with a sometimes foul mouth”: This according to information dug up by private investigator working for William Remington’s lawyer. See “Memorandum of Conversation with Dr. Lombardo,” Oct. 6, 1950, Joseph Rauh papers. See also May, Un-American Activities, pp. 78–79. Peake got confirmation of this during an interview with FBI Special Agent Jack Danahy, Peake’s correspondence with author.

  “number of their live births was announced to all”: Piers Brendon, The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s, New York: Knopf, 2000; Victoria de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922–1945, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

  “Mussolini’s successful attempts to control young people”: Bentley acknowledged under cross-examination during the 1951 Remington trial that she had joined Gruppo Universitate Fascisti. But there is no evidence to support assumptions that she flirted with the ideology. In fact, given the liberal influence of her mother and her exposure to the world of progressive ideas at Vassar—not to mention what she saw in the streets of Italy—it would be most difficult to believe that Bentley found anything appealing about fascism.

  “perhaps from one of her Italian professors”:
The implication was that she had slept with the professor who directed her thesis, the prominent literary critic Mario Casella—or, as one of her detractors said a decade and a half after the fact, that Casella assigned his assistant to write the paper for her. There is no way to judge the veracity of this. This same source told other lurid tales of Bentley’s days in Florence, which she categorically denied. See “Memorandum of Conversation” and May, Un-American Activities, p. 79.

  “and headed home to New York”: Bentley, Out of Bondage, p. 3.

  “in order to support herself and pay tuition”: Bentley’s attendance at Columbia is detailed in FBI report [date illegible] in Bentley FBI file No. 65-56402-25.

  “In New York City alone, 650,000 people were unemployed”: New York State Department of Labor, “Annual Report of the Industrial Commission of State of New York,” Albany: J. R. Lyons, 1934, p. 83; National Unemployment Census, 1937.

  “laid off by the city in a money-saving consolidation move”: As reported in the New York Times, Jan. 21, 1934, p. 1.

  “It was a grim and miserable time”: Details from the New York Times coverage of the Depression: Mar. 2–3, Feb. 6, Apr. 19, July 10, 1934. Also helpful were T. H. Watkins, The Great Depression: America in the 1930s, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1993; Hope Hale Davis, Great Day Coming; Murray Kempton, Part of Our Time.