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

vii, [3], 307, [3] pages. Footnotes. Notes. Index. This work raises urgent new uncertainties about the FBI's behavior--and about the prospects for its expanded powers of surveillance. 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. The real issue is the failure of the FBI to apprehend and convict Soviet agents. In gathering evidence through illegal means, the Bureau provided the Justice Department with information that it was unable to use in court against suspected spies. Athan George Theoharis (August 3, 1936 - July 3, 2021) was an American historian, professor of history at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Theoharis earned all of his degrees from the University of Chicago: two bachelor's degrees in political science in 1956 and 1957, a master's degree in 1958, and his Ph.D. in history in 1965. As well as his extensive teaching career, he was noteworthy as an expert on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), J. Edgar Hoover, and U.S. intelligence agencies, having written and edited many books on these and related subjects. The scope of his writings has extended to Cold War history, anti-communism in America, civil rights and the politics of government secrecy. Derived from a Kirkus review: The author of J. Edgar Hoover, Sex, and Crime turns his attention here to the FBI chief's political attitudes. Theoharis argues that although Hoover was incompetent when it came to catching Soviet spies, his paranoia about the communist threat to America in the middle of the 20th century was valid. There were many Soviet agents operating in the US under Hoover's watch, the author suggests; Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, who initially reined him in, weren't eager to start a Red Scare, but they also underestimated the power of spies working in the federal government. Hoover managed to catch wind of espionage through a variety of means, especially the Venona Project, a code-breaking operation that gave the US access to communications between Moscow and its agents. The bureau failed to fully exploit the project's findings, however, often dithering until real breaks came along. Theoharis argues that the FBI might never have learned of many spies if crucial Soviet operatives hadn't defected and handed over intelligence information on a silver platter. Moreover, even when the FBI caught the culprits, it often failed to convict them in court because the bureau tended to uncover its information via illegal wiretaps and break-ins. The Rosenbergs were an unusual case: the bureau was able to prosecute them on espionage charges because their co-conspirators testified against them. That these co-conspirators had confessed after being presented with illegally obtained information went conveniently unmentioned in court. Hoover demonstrated that little hard evidence was necessary in the pursuit of domestic communism.…