Ivan
R. Dee, Publisher
ISBN 1 - 56663 - 420 - 2 [alk. Paper] |
Reviewed
by Gaither Stewart
here
seems to be something inbred in police forces and secret services
that makes them vulnerable to the temptations of corruption and
power. Yet, police aberrations are as much a question of permissive
systems as of the weak character of the law enforcers and their
controllers. Too often the only investigators of the forces of
law and order are the forces of law and order themselves.
Athan Theoharis, Professor of
History at Marquette University and author of a series of books on the Federal
Bureau of Investigation and its decades long top boss, J. Edgar Hoover, is a
recognized authority on the FBI. The title of his new book,
Catching Spies,
rings ironical since the work on one level depicts the FBIs clamorous failures
rather than its successes in the counterespionage business.
Despite expanded authorizations
and financing since the 1930s, throughout the Cold War and into the anti-terrorist
war, the exposed failures of the gigantic FBI to fulfill its basic mission are
at the least appalling. According to Professor Theoharis, the seldom discussed
effectiveness of Soviet espionage is not the most crucial issue. The most serious
issue concerning American security, he argues, is the failure of the FBI to apprehend
and convict Soviet agents.
During the final years of World
War II in 1944-45, known Communists and Communist sympathizers held sensitive
jobs in Washington. On the basis of wiretaps, bugs, break-ins and mail openings,
the FBI was well informed. It had to know who Party members were, their plans
and strategy, and that the Soviet Union was alerted to some major US military
secrets.
The author quotes a speech by
Senator Joseph McCarthy on February 9, 1950 that the State Department was infested
with Communists and that card-carrying Communists are shaping our
foreign policy. Such charges and the ensuing red scare and the witch hunt
conducted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities [HUAC] hunt in the
United States were in reality a continuation of conservative charges since the
1930s that Communists had infected New Deal agencies and influenced Democratic
Party policies. As a rule the FBI fed inquisitors with secret information, true
or false as it may have been, on which their charges were made.
The so-called Red Scare created
and conducted by the FBI and HUAC sharpened and conditioned American domestic
politics for decades. No few future political leaders emerged from those internecine
battles: future President Richard Nixon was a lawyer on the side of the FBI-HUAC
alliance; J. Edgar Hoover was the undisputed head of counterespionage and internal
police forces; and Ronald Reagan made his mark as an informer against Communists
in Hollywood. The outcome of the political conflict paved the way for subsequent
Republican administrations led by the same protagonists.
The historical fact that the
FBI uncovered an infinitesimal part of Soviet espionage operations in the United
States provokes Professor Theoharis to pose the question whether the FBI was
a match for the KGB. The author concludes that the two major FBI successes, the
breaking of the Soviet consular code and exposing Julius Rosenberg as a Soviet
spy, were pure luck. On one hand he offers convincing evidence of KGB superiority,
while on the other the FBI emerges as a bunch of bumbling amateurs led by political
bureaucrats, caught up in a web of secrecy to prevent scrutiny by other branches
of government and the press.
Catching Spies is not
a sensational book. For most of the 250 pages of text plus forty pages of notes
and index it is tedious reading of details taken from Professor Theohariss
intensive research of newly available KGB and FBI files. There is no spy story
here. Yet, the message rings like a warning today as American security services
are again undergoing reorganization.
The man who probably knows as
much as anyone about the FBI depicts it as a reactionary, anti-liberal, undemocratic,
and uncontrolled instrument in the service of conservative political power. Instead
of catching spies, it made wiretapping, bugs, break-ins and mail openings standard
fare in violation of laws and the Constitution. Yet, such information could not
be used for the conviction of spies; instead the FBI used much of this information
for personal political purposesfueling the crusade against communism, supporting
Senator Joseph McCarthys witch hunt, and undermining political adversaries.
Though FBI boss for decades,
J. Edgar Hoovers indifference to the law is astounding. Hoover, Professor
Theoharis shows, was able to order wiretapping of individuals [illegally] as
respectable as a White House aide or a prominent Washington attorney whose only crimes were
opposition to the President. Such lawless lawmen led inevitably to the witch
hunts of Reds in which the HUAC and the FBI cooperated, one of the low points
of American democracy from 1945 to the end of the Cold War. The alliance of McCarthyism
and FBI obsession with the Red Menace found its nadir on the social level in
the sordid recruitment of informers on college campuses.
When at the end of the Cold
War many restrictions on secret files were eased, a partial record of Soviet
espionage and American counterespionage emerged. The decoding of secret Soviet
consular correspondencethe Venona Projecthas provided wide insights
into Soviet intelligence in the United States and the relationship between Soviet
agents and American Communists. KGB successes were impressive. Some Americans
spied for Moscow or gleaned valuable information from others. Soviet espionage
gathered top secret information about the Manhattan atomic bomb project, about
U.S.-British strategies for post-war Europe, and even about Washingtons
breaking the Soviet code. The KGB succeeded in recruiting several well-placed
spies in the State Department.
Lists of agents and counteragents,
information about recruitment and defectors, and a myriad of names, dates, and
details might leave the general reader of
Catching Spies bedazzled and
unable to determine what is important and what is detail. While only a small
part of this secret history is known, two things however emerge clearly: the
KGB was much more effective than the FBI; the FBI was not only ineffective but
was also caught up in a web of domestic political intrigue which sucked up its
vital energies and efforts. Spy catching was secondary to its leadership.
Professor Theohariss summation
rings as an alarm to anyone preoccupied with the ethics of American police and
intelligence services:
The motivations of FBI
officials may have been patriotic, based on their own political views of the
nations security interests. Their decisions to leak information to ideologically
supportive members of Congress and journalists nonetheless damaged a democratic
system of limited government. They were not disinterested professionals; they
exploited secrecy to shroud their insubordination and their efforts to influence
the political culture and promote
the
cause. One by-product of this culture of secrecy was that it prevented
a critical examination of the FBIs failure to apprehend and help convict
Soviet spies.