Read Online The Rebuttal: Defending 'American Betrayal' From the Book-Burners by Diana West - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Diana West
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“To her, this proves that the Lend-Lease
Act ‘was a slam-dunk victorious Soviet influence operation.’ ”
Remember: “This” (the particular list of “plunder”), in
fact, had nothing to do with uranium or Hopkins. True to sloppy form, Radosh’s
reference to the “slam-dunk influence operation” applies not to uranium or
Hopkins, but instead to the fact that three Soviet assets – Hammer,
Hopkins and White – got Lend-Lease off the ground in the first place.
He continues:
“Or,
as she refers to Lend-Lease at the end of her book: `All that American booty
pirated by Harry Hopkins for Mother Russia.’ ”
Taking this
particular quotation out of context greatly bothers me.
The context is the
recollection of a witness, a national of the former Soviet Union, who discusses
his memories of American prisoners, ex-soldiers or ex-POWs, who moved through
the Gulag Archipelago. One of his anecdotes recounts four American prisoners of
a Gulag mining camp working as mechanics on “mobile electric power stations
that reached Chaunskaya Guba under the Lend-Lease program.”
This was a wholly
unexpected allusion to Lend-Lease to come across while reading about our
ex-POWs in the USSR. My comment is as follows: ( American Betrayal ,
p. 338):
“The
Lend-Lease program—again. All that American booty pirated by Harry
Hopkins for Mother Russia. And what a terrible taunt to our men to have had to
tune up good ol’ American equipment in the desolate Arctic reaches of the
Gulag.”
Radosh ignores this context of, yes, American betrayal and seizes on the quotation − “All that
American booty pirated by Harry Hopkins” − as more evidence of what he
characterizes as my “conspiratorial” if not also “unhinged” “claims” about
Lend-Lease.
He
continues:
“These
claims, which lie at the heart of her conspiracy theory, are demonstrably
wrong, and show that she even fails to understand the nature of unrefined
uranium the Soviets actually received under Lend-Lease, which was not strategic
in terms of making an atomic weapon.”
Here, again we see Radosh inflating
my discussion of uranium and attack his own inflation.
I do not claim that the uranium Lend-Lease
shipped was “strategic in terms of making an atomic weapon.” I discuss uranium,
not weapons grade, “strategic” or “crucial.”
Radosh now goes on,
book-report-style, into an irrelevant discourse on the state of Soviet
technology based on Stalin and the Bomb, a 1996 book by Stanford’s David Holloway.
To underscore: this discussion is
wholly and completely irrelevant to American
Betrayal . That is, the state of Soviet labs in no way negates the unceasing
Soviet efforts to procure uranium stocks from the US during the war, and,
simultaneously, the unceasing pressure brought to bear on the Manhattan Project
by the Lend-Lease bureaucracy to release uranium stocks to the Soviets. This is
part of what I chronicle in American
Betrayal .
But Radosh criticizes me for not
following Holloway’s conventional research track. He writes:
All
of this information can be found in David Holloway’s definitive study. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and
Atomic Energy, 1939-1956, which West seems not to be aware of.”
Maybe that’s because this
“definitive study” has so little to do with my book. Further, Holloway’s
depiction of events is in fact deficient. True, Gen. Groves, for example,
consented to an export license for uranium metal; however, Holloway (at least
as quoted by Radosh) does not convey that this was done expressly because, as
Groves would tell Congress, “we were very interested in knowing if anyone [in
the US] knew how to make the metal.” Another Soviet application for uranium was
approved, Groves said, only “with the idea of smoking them out [the Soviets]
and seeing if they could get it.” Groves believed the embargo he placed on
uranium exports was holding.
Not so – although neither
Holloway nor Radosh tell this part
Act ‘was a slam-dunk victorious Soviet influence operation.’ ”
Remember: “This” (the particular list of “plunder”), in
fact, had nothing to do with uranium or Hopkins. True to sloppy form, Radosh’s
reference to the “slam-dunk influence operation” applies not to uranium or
Hopkins, but instead to the fact that three Soviet assets – Hammer,
Hopkins and White – got Lend-Lease off the ground in the first place.
He continues:
“Or,
as she refers to Lend-Lease at the end of her book: `All that American booty
pirated by Harry Hopkins for Mother Russia.’ ”
Taking this
particular quotation out of context greatly bothers me.
The context is the
recollection of a witness, a national of the former Soviet Union, who discusses
his memories of American prisoners, ex-soldiers or ex-POWs, who moved through
the Gulag Archipelago. One of his anecdotes recounts four American prisoners of
a Gulag mining camp working as mechanics on “mobile electric power stations
that reached Chaunskaya Guba under the Lend-Lease program.”
This was a wholly
unexpected allusion to Lend-Lease to come across while reading about our
ex-POWs in the USSR. My comment is as follows: ( American Betrayal ,
p. 338):
“The
Lend-Lease program—again. All that American booty pirated by Harry
Hopkins for Mother Russia. And what a terrible taunt to our men to have had to
tune up good ol’ American equipment in the desolate Arctic reaches of the
Gulag.”
Radosh ignores this context of, yes, American betrayal and seizes on the quotation − “All that
American booty pirated by Harry Hopkins” − as more evidence of what he
characterizes as my “conspiratorial” if not also “unhinged” “claims” about
Lend-Lease.
He
continues:
“These
claims, which lie at the heart of her conspiracy theory, are demonstrably
wrong, and show that she even fails to understand the nature of unrefined
uranium the Soviets actually received under Lend-Lease, which was not strategic
in terms of making an atomic weapon.”
Here, again we see Radosh inflating
my discussion of uranium and attack his own inflation.
I do not claim that the uranium Lend-Lease
shipped was “strategic in terms of making an atomic weapon.” I discuss uranium,
not weapons grade, “strategic” or “crucial.”
Radosh now goes on,
book-report-style, into an irrelevant discourse on the state of Soviet
technology based on Stalin and the Bomb, a 1996 book by Stanford’s David Holloway.
To underscore: this discussion is
wholly and completely irrelevant to American
Betrayal . That is, the state of Soviet labs in no way negates the unceasing
Soviet efforts to procure uranium stocks from the US during the war, and,
simultaneously, the unceasing pressure brought to bear on the Manhattan Project
by the Lend-Lease bureaucracy to release uranium stocks to the Soviets. This is
part of what I chronicle in American
Betrayal .
But Radosh criticizes me for not
following Holloway’s conventional research track. He writes:
All
of this information can be found in David Holloway’s definitive study. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and
Atomic Energy, 1939-1956, which West seems not to be aware of.”
Maybe that’s because this
“definitive study” has so little to do with my book. Further, Holloway’s
depiction of events is in fact deficient. True, Gen. Groves, for example,
consented to an export license for uranium metal; however, Holloway (at least
as quoted by Radosh) does not convey that this was done expressly because, as
Groves would tell Congress, “we were very interested in knowing if anyone [in
the US] knew how to make the metal.” Another Soviet application for uranium was
approved, Groves said, only “with the idea of smoking them out [the Soviets]
and seeing if they could get it.” Groves believed the embargo he placed on
uranium exports was holding.
Not so – although neither
Holloway nor Radosh tell this part
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