Elizabeth

Bentley – Clever Girl 

Mark here, and welcome to Intelligence and Society, a product of

Kensington Security Consulting. In this lesson, we will examine the

torturous life of Elizabeth Bentley, who shocked America when she confessed to

a hidden life of Soviet espionage. She held several monikers, including Clever

Girl and, my favorite, The Blonde Bombshell from Vassar College. Her bombshell

status is open to dispute but not the impact of a her revelations of Soviet

espionage on American society. Her verified disclosures of vast Soviet spy

networks shook American counterintelligence out of its complacency and directed

it toward exposing and undermining Soviet intelligence and active measures in

the United States.) As we will see, her testimony to the F.B.I. in the

fall of 1945 laid the groundwork for Congressional investigations into Soviet

penetration of the U.S. government and the motion picture industry. So, who was

Elizabeth Bentley? 

Elizabeth Bentley was born of genteel New England stock in 1907 and was

raised by Republican, Episcopalian parents. Her parents, particularly her

mother, advocated for the poor. Both died prematurely before 1925.[i]

The Soviets would give her the code name Clever Girl, and she was clever

enough to earn a half scholarship to Vassar and continue to Columbia and the

University of Florence for graduate work. Later in life, she reminisced about the

“humanistic” education a Vassar "complete pushover

for communism." At Vassar, she was a mediocre student, earning low grades.

Throughout her life, people described her as intelligent but flakey and prone

to periods of melodrama and depression. A Vassar classmate

described her as "kind of a sad sack."

After Vasser, she

studied in Italy in 1933 where she found passion. Mussolini was firmly in

power, and Bentley was excited about the passion springing from the Gruppo

Universitate Fascisti (While

in Italy, she shed her New England Republican upbringing and tasted a social

and political radicalism, which she embraced. She also enjoyed breaking the

rules. Her advisor at the University of Florence was a leading anti-fascist and

provided romantic mentorship. Under

the influence of a profession, she switched her ideology from fascism to

communism.[ii]  (picture 7, Italian communism)

This was not that

rare. After World War Two, many East Germans became ardent communists, as we

will see in future lessons. Before the war, some prominent left-oriented

intellectuals shifted between the dominant authoritarian philosophies and

parties. Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi head of the Peoples Court, Roland Freisler,

moved from communism to National Socialism. Mussolini had his political origins

in left-wing, populist politics. 

Elizabeth

Bentley returned to Columbia in 1934 to finish her master’s degree but did not

pass the examinations. She also had the misfortune of searching for a job when

few were available in Depression-era New York. She joined the American League

Against War and Fascism (picture 9, League) and the Communist Party of

the United States (CPUSA) and remained in the Party for two years. The Party

offered her a tight circle of friends and comrades who partnered in a world

hidden from outsiders. Each member held secrets of others, which created an

unconventional and sometimes intimate bond. Bentley futilely searched for

emotional intimacy her entire life. She also searched for physical intimacy,

which she received from men in her circle of communists. Many of the communists

believed in free love that was unconstrained by Victorian and bourgeois

moralism, which certainly appealed to the hormone-driven Elizabeth.

Enter Golos

Yakov Naumovich Reizen was born in 1889 in the

Ukraine to Jewish, poor parents.[iii]  He became

a committed communist and an officer in the NKGB, a predecessor of the K.G.B.[iv] In the

United States, he used the alias Golos, which means voice in Russian. (picture

10, Golos) (Text –

Golos)  Golos lived in the

United States for years and understood the nuances and idiosyncrasies of

American culture.[v]

He worked with Bentley at World Tourists, (picture 11, USSR tourist) a

Soviet front company. Soon, they became lovers even though Golos had a wife and

family in the Soviet Union. One commentator is convinced that both fell in love

with each other. Others speculate that he needed her to promote Soviet

interests. Golos likely spotted her vulnerability and love-bombed her to bring

her under his control. This certainly fits into Soviet tradecraft. He probably

saw the risks of sending such a flighty personality on dangerous courier

missions. But he calculated that he could control her. And he did, unlike his

successors who unsuccessfully tried to reign in the fiercely independent Miss

Bentley.

Bentley

continued to work part-time at Columbia University's Italian Library, but soon,

she was fired because her connection to fascism was revealed. Golos was forced

to register as an agent of the USSR under the Foreign Agents Registration Act

or FARA, which is the topic of future lessons. And now, the FBI was on to

him.  

Golos

trained Bentley to avoid detection.  She

varied her travel and took several cabs. She would leave the cab several blocks

from her destination and walk the remaining distance, zigzagging between blocks

and department stores.) She would meet in parks, or hotel lobbies, or

(picture) restaurants. Her handlers would claim that she became sloppy about

her tradecraft as a courier. In all fairness, she met with many people, had to

memorize many names and meeting places, and was constantly on guard.

Elizabeth

first began using codenames in student circles at Columbia. Now, long out of

college, she had different aliases or code names. He called herself Helen or

Myrna or Mary. Bentley never made copies of the documents she received from her

sources. This would make verifying some claims she made after she defected

difficult. When Bentley revealed the vast network of Soviet spies to the

F.B.I., the agents were initially reluctant to believe her. She had no proof.

We will see that another American agent who served as a courier to the Soviets,

Whitaker Chambers, photographed purloined documents in case he needed them. And

he did need them. He kept them inside of pumpkins. But Bentley had no copies

and relied on her memory. Sometimes her memory was sharp; sometimes it wasn’t.

Tradecraft – Sloppy Lizzy (SLIDE X)

In the

early 1940s, Bentley shuttled between Washington DC and New York to receive

documents from high-level American communist spies. She usually traveled every

two weeks. And there are many of them. Some stand out. William Remington, who

worked for the War Production Board at the time. Nathan Gregory Silvermaster was a

Russian-born bureaucrat who did not pass much intelligence to Elizabeth and

whose true value was his connection to the rest of the group. The group also

allegedly included Harry Dexter White the undersecretary of the Treasury who

was one of the architects of the post-war economic system, the International

Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.

During

her confession, she identified almost 50 Communist agents operating in the

U.S., which would lead to a network of 150 spies that included 37 federal

employees. She met a man named Julius who fit the description of Julius

Rosenberg. This would be used in the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.  Elizabeth's testimony that the CPUSA was

intimately tied to the Soviet Union. This was a key and damning disclosure

because it helped shatter the myth that the CPUSA acted autonomously without

the direction of financial help of the Soviet Union.[vi]

In 1943,

Golos suffered a heart attack and died. The following day, Bentley met her new

handler “Bill,” Itzhak Akhmerov, the leading non-official cover NKVD operative in the U.S.

The relationship became toxic immediately after Akhmerov made demands on

Bentley, which she brushed off. She thought he patronized her because she was a

woman. In October 1944, Elizabeth was again given a new handler, Joseph Klatz,

one of the most active NKGB agents in the U.S. She didn't like him or Earl

Browder, the leader of the CPUSA. Her prickly personality did not help

her maintain amiable and productive relationships with the Soviets.

In early

1945, an emotionally and financially drained Bentley began to drink heavily.

This degraded her already-declining performance as a courier. The Soviets

became increasingly worried that this barfly would spill her secrets. And they

were right. They considered killing her to quiet her. But in August 1945, she

moved to New Haven, Connecticut. She went to the F.B.I. and, on November 7,

1945 began to confess all. It was too late to kill her now. At first, the

F.B.I. thought she was a scatterbrain drunk. However, after investigating her

claims, they realized that most of her stories were likely correct. They

alerted Hoover, who became very concerned.

Throughout

1948, Elizabeth became the F.B.I.'s star witness in a series of committees and

grand juries. Some of her recollections were imprecise, but she offered facts

to allow the F.B.I. to puzzle together a fairly complete picture of networks. (Here

she is testifying before HUAC There was one of the great faceoffs

between the accused of Soviet espionage and the accuser.[vii]

William Remington presented as an all-American boy with movie star looks. This

upper-middle-class Ivy League graduate had access to War Department secrets,

which he passed to Bentley.[viii]

He perjured himself in testimony and was sent to prison, where he was murdered.  Here is Remington responding to Bentley’s

claims

 Bentley also revealed elements of

the Rosenberg ring. The Rosenbergs were executed. Harry Dexter White succumbed

to a heart attack during the hearings and died. So, four persons in her

communist circle died. In another lesson, we will discuss high-profile Soviet

agents who passed information to her.They were important spies and testified

before HUAC. But they lacked the melodrama of the Elizabeth Bentley show.

Were

her claims about Soviet espionage correct? By and large, yes, they were. The

Venona decryption program, which uncovered communications between Soviet

intelligence agents in the U.S. and USSR, would later vindicate her claims and

confirm that nearly everything she had testified to was true.

Life After Espionage (slide

Life After Espionage)

Elizabeth

Bentley had a moment of fame that she enjoyed. She was the center of national

attention, and people sought her out for interviews. She often relished this

moment because they gave her the attention she needed. But her fame faded

quickly, and her speaking engagements dried up. In 1951, Bentley published an

autobiography, Out of Bondage, (picture, though to whom or what she was

ever bondaged remains unclear. Later, she became a Catholic

schoolteacher with the help of friends in the anti-Communist community to

support herself. Throughout the rest of her life, she would fade into obscurity

and continue her descent into alcoholism, from which she died in 1963.

 Bentley’s revelations energized the F.B.I. to

target the Soviets. During the war, the F.B.I. focused on German and Japanese had

relegated Soviet spying to the back burner and had devoted most of its

attention to the more pressing business of German and Japanese espionage. Bentley's

pilled secrets eviscerated the Soviet espionage apparatus, and Moscow never

recovered. The Silvermaster and Perlo groups were destroyed, and other skilled,

experienced, and well-placed agents took cover. Soviet officers who ran the

agents took diplomatic cover, and many returned to the Soviet Union. Finally, Bentley's

information forced the hand of the Truman administration (22, Truman) to

take the Soviet penetration of government agencies seriously. By any measure, Bentley

was one of the three or four most important defectors from the Soviet Union.

Her testimony before HUAC rattled the nation and would be a dramatic prelude to

further investigations of Soviet influence. Yet, as historian Kathryn notes,

eleven prominent college textbooks on American history discuss Whittaker

Chambers but do not mention Bentley. Scholars of the Cold War debate why

history has largely abandoned the case of Elizabeth Bentley.

Popular Culture (slide and narration)

So, how did Elizabeth Bentley fit into popular culture? She became a

target of the dominant media when her defection from communism was made public.

Snickering and sarcasm began immediately, and her physical appearance became a

target. She was bestowed with the derogatory or sarcastic monikers we discussed

earlier. Perhaps the historian Earl Latham expressed the familiar image as "imaginings

of a neurotic spinster." (picture 24, Bentley_three_shots) But,

generally, Ms. Bentley was ignored. For fifty years, there were no published

scholarly or even journalistic biographies of her life. To my knowledge, there

were no doctoral dissertations about her.

By the time she died, she was largely forgotten, a relic of a more

innocent age when revelations of American communists were shocking. By the late

1950s, the shock had long worn out. Also, many Americans were still sympathetic

to those who were accused of being communists. () This was certainly the case with Hollywood

entertainers, discussed in detail in other lessons. Some professors conceded

that Elizabeth Bentley was honest and accurate, but not many rushed to

exonerate her image. She was simply forgotten.

 But her search for the credibility

that eluded her in life was granted to her decades after she succumbed to the

effects of her drinking and loneliness. Only in her grave did she receive

complete vindication and validation for her claims of the vast network of

Soviet agents throughout the U.S. government. The release of the Venona codes

proved her claims were accurate. Perhaps not every claim was without mistake,

but most disclosures were largely accurate, and many were entirely correct.

Books (slide)

She was not forgotten entirely and will not be forgotten because there

are two solid biographies of her. Kathryn Olmsted's Red Spy Queen and

Lauren Kessler's Clever Girl.  Kathryn Olmsted is a professor of history who studies the

cultural and political history of the United States since World War I.[ix]

She is prolific and has published on some of the world's most prestigious

university presses. (picture, 28 picture of Olmsted)

The Cold War historian John Earl Haynes (  credits Olmsted Red Spy Queen is as

a scholarly book with a full academic apparatus and is based on extensive

original archival research. This is high praise from Haynes, who is a world

expert on Ameican communism. You will notice that Haynes’ commentary pops up in

lessons on the early Cold War period.

There are many things Haynes likes about Red Spy Queen. He sees it

as a well-researched and objective account by a historian who concluded that

Bentley was not a fraud or a fabulist on key issues. Yes, she embellished her

biography a bit, but she did not lie about those whom she accused of espionage.  She paints a dark picture of Bentley’s

personality but concludes that Bentley told the truth

about Soviet espionage in high places.[x]

Olmsted scholarly work verifies Bentley’s claims of Soviet espionage in

high places. She also objectively brings to light the unintegrated nature of

Bentley personality. Her impulsive decision making, often-reckless risk taking,

and cloying demands of emotional and attention. Olmsted opines that Bentley differed

from defectors in that she never really had her heart in communism. from the

others, and particularly from Chambers, her fellow defector from communism, is

that she seems never to have held any strong beliefs.

Haynes hailed Red Spy Queen as a welcome indication that some in our academy, given irrefutable

evidence, are not afraid to face the facts about Soviet espionage in America.[xi]

Also, historians CIA liked the book. More specifically, Michael Warner, a

historian writing for the CIA publication Studies in Intelligence,

praise it. He did say that Olmsted could have cast the Bentley case in the

larger context of American efforts against the Soviets.[xii]

Nonetheless, Warner acclaims her efforts by saying, “Thanks to her, we now have

the threads tied together sufficiently to explain why Bentley’s charges were

both substantially correct and almost entirely unsubstantiated by any positive

evidence until the declassification of the VENONA cables in 1995.”[xiii]

Lauren...