Chasing Spies: How the FBI Failed in Counter-Intelligence But Promoted the Politics of McCarthyism in the Cold War Years - Hardcover

Theoharis, Athan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1566634202 ISBN 13: 9781566634205

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, 2002

Synopsis

The long history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation under J. Edgar Hoover is studded with serious questions about the Bureau's professionalism and accountability. Revelations in the recent cases of Wen Ho Lee, Robert Hannsen, and Timothy McVeigh illustrate these misgivings. In Chasing Spies, Athan Theoharis, historian and perhaps the foremost authority on the FBI's record, raises urgent new uncertainties about the Bureau's behavior―and about the prospects for giving the FBI expanded powers of surveillance during the current national emergency. Mr. Theoharis here redefines the politics of the World War II and cold war eras, moving the debate beyond the narrow perspective triggered by the release of KGB records and intercepted Soviet consular reports (the Venona messages). The intriguing issue, he argues, is not the effectiveness of Soviet espionage activities as supported by the new evidence. Nor is it the long-standing charges of “softness toward communism” in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. The real issue, he says, is the failure of the FBI to apprehend and convict Soviet agents. Based on meticulous research in FBI files, Chasing Spies uncovers the FBI's role in the most important espionage cases of the cold war years. The book shows how secrecy immunized FBI operations from critical scrutiny and enabled FBI officials to mask their counterintelligence failures while promoting a politics of McCarthyism.

About this title

About the Author:

Athan Theoharis is professor of history at Marquette University. His many books include The Boss, From the Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover, Spying on Americans, Beyond the Hiss Case, Seeds of Repression, and The Yalta Myths. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

From Publishers Weekly:

Marquette University historian Theoharis (J. Edgar Hoover, Sex, and Crime), a leading scholar of the FBI, draws deeply on internal documents to argue that often-illegal FBI investigations subverted the agency's mission of combating Communist espionage while providing extensive background information for McCarthy, HUAC and others. Cold War historians have concerned themselves with the FDR and Truman administrations' putative "softness toward Communism," which, Theoharis argues, is unfortunate for two reasons. One, it's not true: the FBI budget skyrocketed from $5 million to $90 million between 1936 and 1952, and Roosevelt's Attorney General Francis Biddle approved all of Hoover's wiretap requests; Hoover himself assured Roosevelt in 1941 that the FBI had Soviet agents "under constant scrutiny." Second, the argument fails to consider the FBI's various failures in capturing and convicting Soviet spies, its use of illegal wiretaps, the transcripts of which would be inadmissible in a trial, and its role in the "creation of a culture of lawlessness." Spies were uncovered by Venona Project codebreakers and the confessions of Elizabeth Bentley, but the FBI failed to build cases even then, argues Theoharis. And when the major COMRAP investigation documented merely "that American Communists were Communists, not Soviet spies," FBI attention shifted from espionage to influence not just in government, but everywhere from Hollywood to Colorado classrooms. Though the title suggests a bracing pace and a revelation-filled read, Theoharis's book is more of a studied analysis that seeks to paint a better portrait of the FBI's crucial hidden role in generating the culture of suspicions and blacklists that dominated McCarthyism.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1566634202
• ISBN 13: 9781566634205
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320