How the Cold War Began

by Amy Knight

  Despite its renewed powers of electronic surveillance, the FBI failed to corroborate any of the claims of its star “defector,” Elizabeth Bentley. A frustrated Attorney General Clark, against the warnings of J. Edgar Hoover, convened a Federal Grand Jury in early 1947 to conduct secret hearings about possible espionage among government employees, with Bentley as the chief witness. Bentley rehashed her story, and more than a hundred witnesses were hauled in, including Harry Dexter White. But after thirteen months, there were no indictments. Eager for public attention, Bentley leaked her story to the press, and as a result, HUAC began hearings to investigate her allegations in late July 1948. Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, symbols of the New Deal intelligentsia, were on the top of their agenda.4

  Espionage was increasingly a political football in America. Truman faced re-election in November 1948, and the Republicans, including a young, very ambitious congressman named Richard Nixon, who used the HUAC hearings to place himself in the limelight, were determined to establish that the Democrats were soft on communism. Both Bentley and Whittaker Chambers testified in detail. But Bentley's statements were unconvincing, especially since she had never met either Alger Hiss or Harry Dexter White. And Chambers only went so far as to say that Hiss and White, along with several other Washington civil servants, had been members of an underground communist group during the time he had been a member of the Communist Party. He told HUAC that he left the party in 1937 and did not mention espionage.5

  Then suddenly, in November 1948, after many private meetings with Richard Nixon, Chambers came up with films of documents and papers allegedly passed to him by White and Hiss in early 1938. The documents purportedly showed that both Hiss and White had engaged in espionage for the Soviets. By this time Harry Dexter White had died of a heart attack, but a Grand Jury indicted Hiss for perjury because of his allegedly false testimony about his relationship with Chambers and his involvement with communists. Hiss's trial in May 1949 resulted in a hung jury. A second trial began on November 17, 1949, and lasted two months, with Hiss being found guilty of perjury in January 1950.6

  Incredibly, after testifying explicitly to HUAC that he had left the party in 1937, Chambers had contradicted himself and said he defected in 1938, thus accommodating the dates on his newly produced documentary evidence. Unfortunately for Hiss, the jury that convicted him never knew about the interviews the FBI had conducted previously with Chambers in which he stated, over and over again, that he had left the party in 1937, before he could have collected secret material from Hiss and White. The reports of these interviews remained classified until the FBI released them many years later.7

  Before Chambers belatedly produced the filmed and typed documents in 1948, the FBI was fully aware there was no evidence to show that Hiss had engaged in espionage. This is made clear in an FBI memorandum written five years later, in November 1953, to accompany a summary report on Hiss: “It is strongly recommended that no dissemination of the attached material be given to a Congressional committee for the following reasons: 1. Up to the time Hiss left the Government in January 1947, the Bureau had no evidence to prove a case against Hiss. . . . No espionage allegations were received from Chambers regarding Hiss until November, 1948. . . . The Bentley espionage allegations involving Hiss in 1945 had not been proven, and Gouzenko's allegation in 1945 regarding a Soviet agent in the State Department who was an assistant to an Assistant Secretary of State had not been identified as Hiss, although there was a strong possibility this person could have been Hiss.”8

  The author of the memorandum apparently did not realize that this description could not have applied to Hiss, who in 1945 was well above the level of an assistant to an Assistant Secretary of State in the State Department hierarchy. A week later, on November 20, 1953, another FBI in-house memorandum was circulated. It again confirmed that Gouzenko had initially described the State Department spy as an assistant to an Assistant Secretary of State.9 But by 1953 this was water under the bridge. It was already dogma in Washington's governing circles that Igor Gouzenko had named Hiss as a spy in 1945, and no one questioned it.

  Alger Hiss had become for the Republicans the personification of insidious communist subversion, and his conviction for perjury helped catapult young Richard Nixon to the nomination as Republican candidate for the vice-presidency in 1952. But Hiss's imprisonment for three years on perjury charges was hardly a triumph for the FBI or the attorney general, who had expended so much effort investigating the Bentley and Chambers allegations. Aside from Hiss, only one other individual, a former employee of the War Production Board named William Remington, was convicted, out of the more than 150 people who were investigated by the FBI. And like Hiss, Remington (who would be murdered by fellow inmates in prison) was convicted on charges of perjury, not espionage. The standards of proof in the U.S. judicial system were higher than those of the court of public opinion.

  The FBI was further hindered before the Grand Jury convened to hear Chambers's and Bentley's testimony because neither of them was a very credible witness. Both had betrayed their country by serving as agents for the Soviets before “coming clean” with American authorities. And both were prone to contradicting earlier testimonies and fabricating certain aspects of their stories. Gouzenko, by contrast, had appeared honest and resolute, his past and his personal life a clear progression toward righteousness. Yes, he had been a member of the Soviet intelligence apparatus, but it was not by choice that he was born a Soviet citizen and enlisted into the NKVD. His claims that he had defected because he loved democracy and wanted to enlighten the people in the West about Soviet evils were widely accepted. He rarely contradicted himself in his testimony. And of course he brought evidence to corroborate his allegations about Soviet espionage. As we know, the evidence in many cases did not hold up in Canadian courts, but it nonetheless looked impressive.

  Gouzenko's apparent heroism, his credibility, and his first-hand knowledge of Soviet espionage kept American red hunters interested in him. They continued to assert that the Canadians (with the collusion of the Truman administration) had covered up the American connection in the case. By talking to Gouzenko in person they hoped not only to discover new American spy suspects, but also to find more evidence to confirm the guilt of Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White.

  Although HUAC was thwarted by the U.S. State Department in its efforts to interview Gouzenko in 1946, Senator Pat McCarran had more success three years later. In May 1949, when he was still Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, McCarran sent two investigators from the committee's Subcommittee on Immigration up to Ottawa to interview Gouzenko. The stated purpose of the interview was to examine two specific questions related to immigration procedures and security, but the subcommittee clearly had broader goals. The Hiss perjury trial had just begun. Coming up with further evidence from Gouzenko to corroborate Chambers's and Bentley's claims about Hiss and White would have been highly useful for the anti-communist agenda of McCarran and the other red hunters in Washington.

  Upon their arrival in Ottawa the American investigators asked the RCMP for a copy of all the evidence taken before the Royal Commission on Espionage in 1946. The request was turned down, on the advice of the American Embassy, which had consulted with the FBI and apparently wanted to prevent McCarran's subcommittee from going on a “fishing expedition.” The FBI had most of the documentation from the Royal Commission, but it had not made it available to the congressional committees. (The FBI also had access to Gouzenko when requested and in fact would interview him once more in August 1950, although the details remain secret.)10

  The 1949 subcommittee interview was short, yielding only eighteen pages of testimony, and Gouzenko had little new to offer beyond what he had already told the FBI shortly after his defection. When asked about possible American spies in the United States, he mentioned that the GRU had discussed “transferring contact with Steinberg,” and made reference to an “assistant of Stettinius” in the State Department.11

  The
Canadian government insisted that Gouzenko's testimony not be publicized, but instead should be made available to the subcommittee for internal use. Despite repeated bullying by Senator McCarran, the Canadians stuck to their guns, pointing out finally that “Had the Canadian Government been aware that it would be pressed to have the Gouzenko evidence published, it would not have agreed in the first instance to the testimony being taken by U.S. officials.”12

  When senators Jenner and McCarran interviewed Gouzenko in January 1954, it was Gouzenko himself who inspired them to seek his testimony by giving the idea that he had something new to say. In October 1953, he had granted an interview to a reporter from the Chicago Tribune named Eugene Griffin. Gouzenko talked a lot, but had little to offer beyond the claim that there were still lots of spies operating freely in Canada and the United States. After several long hours, Griffin had become frustrated because he had nothing he could use as a lead for a story. Finally, Griffin asked Gouzenko what he thought about the idea of talking to one of the congressional committees in Washington. Gouzenko responded that it would be “worthwhile,” thus implying that he had something new and significant to tell the Americans. He was also critical of the Canadian government for not following his advice in handling the Soviet Union and espionage after he had defected.13

  On October 27, 1953, immediately after Gouzenko's comments to Griffin appeared, the RCMP called Gouzenko in and asked him whether the Tribune had reported his statements accurately. Gouzenko stated flatly that he had no information that he had not long since conveyed to Canadian authorities and that the reporter had misquoted him. He denied that he had criticized the handling of his case by the Canadian government and said that he would not be willing under any circumstances to go to the United States to be interviewed by a congressional committee.14

  Senator Jenner's Internal Security Subcommittee, meanwhile, was prompted by the Tribune article to request an interview with Gouzenko, which was forwarded to Ottawa on October 29. One purpose of the interview, as we know, would be to determine the guilt or innocence of Arthur Steinberg, but Jenner and McCarran also hoped that Gouzenko could give them something on Hiss. Hiss had already been prosecuted on perjury charges and was in prison, but there were still a lot of people who thought he was innocent of espionage, a crime he was never charged with because of the statute of limitations that required prosecution within ten years of the alleged crime. The more evidence to prove to the American public that Hiss had been a spy the better. Finally, Jenner and McCarran hoped that Gouzenko would come up with entirely new names of Americans who had been spies.15

  Persuading the Canadians to allow SISS access to Gouzenko was no easy feat. The reply from Canada to Jenner's request was that there could be no interview because Mr. Gouzenko had been misquoted by the Tribune and had no further information to give the Americans. Speaking in the House of Commons on November 17, Lester Pearson, now a member of Parliament and serving as secretary of state for external affairs, discussed the American request and reiterated what Gouzenko had said to the RCMP. Much to the embarrassment of the Canadian government, however, Gouzenko promptly contradicted Pearson. On November 21, 1953, he issued a statement to the press in which he now upheld the accuracy of the Tribune story and said he would be most happy to be interviewed by the congressional committee, although he stipulated that the interview be held in Canada. He had not told the Tribune, Gouzenko asserted, that he had new information he had not disclosed to the Canadian government, but rather that he would be in a position to offer useful advice to the Americans. Gouzenko's statement concluded, “It appears that Mr. Pearson was ill advised and acted in such haste that he even neglected to read the original interview upon which he based his not correct statement in Parliament.”16

  Meanwhile, SISS, in an effort to pressure the Canadian government to allow them an interview with Gouzenko, launched a personal attack on Lester Pearson by leaking testimony against him given by Elizabeth Bentley two years earlier. Pearson had been a potential target of the red hunters in Washington since 1950, when he argued strongly in the Canadian Parliament against proposed legislation to make communist activities punishable under the criminal code. In Pearson's words, “I hope we will refuse to throw overboard our liberty, remembering that communism is declining in the free countries, including Canada. . . . It is being beaten by the good sense, the loyal patriotism, the belief in liberty under law and maintaining of prosperity, and the eradication of social injustices.”17

  Pearson had aroused further suspicion and anger on Capitol Hill when, in August 1951, he came to the defense of Canadian diplomat Herbert Norman, whose name had been dragged into SISS hearings on communist spies. Pearson accused SISS publicly of “irresponsibility” and “witch-hunting.”18 It is no coincidence that, just days later, the chief counsel of the subcommittee, Robert Morris, called Elizabeth Bentley to testify about Canadian communists. As Morris later expressed it, “Lester Pearson vigorously protested and denounced everything the Senate Internal Security Committee ever did. When we uncovered Herbert Norman he [Pearson] was making all kinds of demands and denounced us. . . . So Pearson was a big enemy of the Senate Internal Security Committee.”19

  Elizabeth Bentley had been going downhill fast since she testified before the Grand Jury and HUAC in 1948. Her main problems were alcohol addiction and lack of money, problems that often appear in tandem. Out of the limelight and frequently without employment, Bentley had begun to drink heavily. She was able for a time to live on the income she received from magazine articles and her book, Out of Bondage, a somewhat embellished version of her personal story. But by 1951 she was having trouble keeping up with her bills, so she was always happy to help out the red hunters in Washington, in the hope that rewards might come her way in the future.20

  Despite her liabilities, Bentley was all the FBI and congressional red hunters had, so they continued to rely on her in going after suspected spies. In her August 14, 1951, testimony to the subcommittee, Bentley reiterated what she had told the FBI more than five years earlier about Canadian Hazen Sise, whom she knew in Washington during 1943–44, when he was working for the National Film Board of Canada. But she added some remarkable new details. She had initially said to the FBI that she met Sise for about a year, beginning in the spring of 1943, and that he had furnished her with “gossip” he overheard from Canadian and British diplomats. Now, with Morris encouraging her, she claimed that she met with Sise for two years, beginning in 1942, and that he handed over “super hush-hush” information from none other than Lester Pearson, who was second-in- command at what was still the Canadian Legation at the time:

  Bentley: I understand from Hazen that Pearson knew Hazen was a Communist and was willing to help. Pearson by virtue of his position used to sit in on American functions, particularly British ones re British policies, all of which was super hush-hush . . .

  Morris [committee counsel]: He was giving this information to Hazen Size [sic]?

  Bentley: This is correct.

  Morris: What did you do with it?

  Bentley: That was turned over to Golos during his lifetime and later on to his succeeding agent.

  Morris: And it went on to the Soviets?

  Bentley: This is right.21

  The FBI, which was privy to this secret testimony in 1951, was surprised by what Bentley said about Pearson. According to an inter-agency memorandum, “A check of Bureau files failed to reflect that Bentley had provided information regarding Pearson to the Bureau on earlier interviews and contained no information indicating espionage or related activity on the part of Pearson.”22 Its interest piqued, the bureau called Bentley in for an interview to discuss Pearson and Sise three days after her subcommittee appearance, and on two subsequent occasions after that. She provided more details. She and Sise often met at the fashionable Mayflower Hotel in Washington and dined at the French restaurant L’Escargot.

  She asserted that Pearson had moved in left-wing circles before World War II. He and Sise, also a “left-
winger,” had been very friendly in Canada.

  Nonetheless, Bentley backed away from alleging that Pearson deliberately passed on information to Sise. In her third FBI interview, “Bentley advised that this information [from Sise] was principally gossip that Sise had overheard and that she could not state definitely whether Pearson was conscious that he was supplying information to Sise, who was in turn supplying the information to an unauthorized source.”23 After yet another question period with Bentley in February 1952, the FBI closed the Pearson case because “interviews disclosed Pearson did not consciously supply information for transmittal to unauthorized parties.”24

  Bentley's accusations against Pearson to SISS in 1951 had not been publicized, although the substance of her comments may have been relayed to Prime Minister St. Laurent through the U.S. State Department. If SISS had released her testimony, it would have created a diplomatic crisis with Canada. But the subcommittee kept the testimony on its back burner. Now, two years later, after Pearson had offended SISS by refusing access to Gouzenko, SISS retaliated. Bentley's testimony about him was made available to Victor Lasky, a virulently anti-communist American journalist.