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BOOK REVIEWS

A Review of: “Stalin's Fictitious Spy”

Bernd–Rainer Barth and Werner Schweizer, eds.: Der Fall Noel Field: Schlüsselfigur der Schauprozesse in Osteuropa (The Case of Noel Field: Key Figure in the Show Trials in Eastern Europe) BasisDruck Verlag, Berlin, 2005, XXXVIII + 933 p., 60[euro].

Pages 325-348 | Published online: 12 Mar 2009

REFERENCES

  • The number of those purged was staggering: 370,000 in Poland; 550,000 in Czechoslovakia; 300,000 in East Germany; 200,000 in Romania; 200,000 in Hungary; and 90,000 in Bulgaria. See Zbigniew K. Brzezinski , The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict ( Cambridge , MA : Harvard University Press , 1967 ), p. 97 .
  • Flora Lewis , Red Pawn: The Story of Noel Field: The Strange Story of an American Caught Up in an International Communist Intrigue (Garden City , NY : Doubleday , 1965).
  • See, for example, the review of the Barth-Schweizer book by the Insiderkomitee zur Föerderung der kritischen Aneignung der Geschichte des MfS [Insider Committee for Promotion of a Critical Assessment of the History of the MfS], an organization of former East German Ministry for State Security officers, at http://www.mfs-insider.de/jourfixe/JF0202.htm and Wolfgang Hartman's review in UTOPIE Kreativ 184 (February 2006), pp. 125–136, http://www.rosalux.de/cms/index.php?id=9928&autorid=690 Hartmann, a former East German intelligence officer, is a member of the Insiderkomitee .
  • Bulgarian authorities, however, released a “posthumous” confession after Kostov was executed. The trials were carefully scripted. The DVD includes an interview with Dr. Iván Földi, one of the Hungarian purge victims. He relates that the prosecutor drilled him on the questions he would be asked and the answers he was to give prior to trial. When he asked how he should respond if a question not on the list were asked, he was told that would not happen .
  • Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky , KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev ( New York : HarperCollins , 1991 ), p. 411 .
  • Robert Conquest , The Great Terror: A Reassessment ( New York and Oxford : Oxford University Press , 1990 ), p. 462 .
  • Polish authorities destroyed the original, but a copy survived in the Hungarian police archive .
  • Field was the subject of a State Security investigation in 1938, and this may have played a role in his dismissal from the League .
  • A defector from the Communist movement informed Francis A. Henson, an American publicist and then director of the International Rescue and Relief Committee in Frankfurt, of Field's connection to Soviet intelligence. Henson passed the information to the FBI, claiming the USC was a Communist-controlled organization .
  • Hede Massing , This Deception ( New York : Duell, Sloane and Pearce , 1951 ), p. 148 .
  • See Sam Tannenhaus , “Hiss Case ‘Smoking Gun’?” The New York Times , 15 October 1993 , p. A35 . See also Mária Schmidt , “The Hiss Dossier: A Historian's Report,” The New Republic , 8 November 1993 , pp. 17 – 21 .
  • Ibid .
  • Ethan Klingsberg , “The Noel Field Dossier. Case Closed on Alger Hiss?,” The Nation , 8 November 1993 , pp. 528 – 532 , especially p. 530 .
  • Protocols of Noel Field's interrogations are found in Documents 54–55, 60–64, 66–67, 70, 988, and 91. Those of Herta Field include Documents 108–109 and 110 .
  • The NKFD was formed in 1943 in a Soviet prisoner of war camp. Its purpose was to create an alliance of left-wing forces, including Communists and socialists, to resist Hitler. Several of its leaders became prominent figures in Soviet-occupied Germany, and later in the German Democratic Republic. The French branch was called Comité Allemagne Libre Pour L'Ouest, abbreviated as CALPO .
  • James Srodes , Allen Dulles: Master of Spies ( Washington , DC : Regnery , 1999 ), p. 361 .
  • Jonathan S. Gould , “The OSS and the London ‘Free Germans,’ Studies in Intelligence , Vol. 46 , No. 1 , 2002 , pp. 11 – 29 . See also Benjamin B. Fischer , “Farewell to Sonia, The Spy Who Haunted Britain,” International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence , Vol. 15 , No. 1 , Spring 2000 , pp. 71 – 72 .
  • Stewart Steven , Operation Splinter Factor: The Untold Story of America's Most Secret Cold War Intelligence Operation ( Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott , 1974 ).
  • See James Srodes , Allen Dulles , pp. 413 – 415 .
  • For a debunking review, see William Shawcross , “Another CIA Plot?,” The New York Review of Books , Vol. 21 , Nos. 21 and 22 , 23 January 1975 , Internet edition, at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19301
  • Tim Weiner , Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA ( New York : Doubleday , 2007 ), p. 63 .
  • See Steven's obituary in the Daily Telegraph of 19 January 2004, Internet edition, at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/20/db2001.xml
  • Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. , “Left Field,” The New York Review of Books , Vol. 4 , No. 1 , 11 February 1965 , Internet edition, at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/13038

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