Read Online Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by Harvey Klehr;John Earl Haynes;Alexander Vassiliev - Free Book Online Page B

the
top secret KGB files; the fanatics didn't want to know, they didn't want
other people to know, and they were prepared to destroy everyone who
wanted to tell the story.
    In February zoos I received from Butler an article, "Venona and
Alger Hiss," by John Lowenthal, published in the journal Intelligence and National Security in autumn 2000. I looked through it and found nasty
things about The Haunted Wood and me, as well as quotes from Boris
Labusov, who by that time had replaced Yury Kobaladze as the head of
the SVR press bureau-and I did not pay much attention. I had never
heard of John Lowenthal or Intelligence and National Security before.
So when Butler asked me whether I was going to respond to Lowenthal's
allegations, I wrote to her on 4 March 2001 as follows: "Thank you for the
article by Mr. Lowenthal. I don't think I will be answering it in any way.
I've got nothing to say to people who want to serve as a mouthpiece of the
Russian Intelligence Service. On the other hand, I must admit the things
he said about me and my work [are] the best advertisement for The
Haunted Wood I could imagine. I would be much more worried if the
Service said they liked the book."

    A few months later I went to Amazon.com to see how The Haunted
Wood was doing and saw among readers' comments a review by the same
John Lowenthal; it began with the words "Unreliable and mostly unverifiable." He said that the book, "particularly in its use of KGB archival
files, is unreliable and, for the most part, unverifiable. Where it is verifiable at all, it turns out to be wrong." Lowenthal quoted Boris Labusov and
touted his own article in Intelligence and National Security.
    This time I got upset. Lowenthal's allegations at Amazon.com damaged both my credibility and the sales of The Haunted Wood, and they
had a much bigger impact than an article in some obscure journal. I
searched the Web and discovered other unpleasant things. "Venona and
Alger Hiss" had been posted on at least two Web sites: that of the British
Universities Film and Video Council and one devoted to Alger Hiss at
New York University. Intelligence and National Security turned out to be
a respectable journal, and it placed an extract about The Haunted Wood
on its own Web site to promote the article. This nastiness was spreading
like a cancer. As for John Lowenthal, he wasn't a nobody; he was a former
lawyer and friend of Alger Hiss and a politically motivated crusader.
    In his article Lowenthal made several allegations that were particularly painful to me since I was the one who had done the research. The
first one: "Press officer Boris Labusov was still with the Foreign Intelligence Service when The Haunted Wood was published (1999), and I
asked him what he thought of it. He said, `if you want to be correct, don't
rely much on The Haunted Wood.... When they put this or that name
in Venona documents in square brackets, it's the mere guess of the coauthors."'
    At the last stage of work on The Haunted Wood either Allen Weinstein or the editors decided to replace cover names in the quotations from the
KGB files with real names in brackets for the sake of the simplicity of the
narrative. I learned about it only when I received copies of the book. I
had written draft chapters on the basis of the files, translated them into
English, and given them to Allen. He rewrote them, using additional material he had available, and sent them back to me for review. I made my
comments and sent them to Allen. However, I never received galleys
from the publisher, and I thought replacing the cover names with real
names in brackets was a bad idea-it distorted the quotes and opened us
to criticism. Yet Lowenthal's saying that it was a "mere guess of the coauthors" was a shameless lie. I had access to agents' personal files that
contained their real names, and Boris Labusov knew it since he was sitting in the same room with me and sometimes brought me files from "the