May 3, 2013 0
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 26 April 2013
Sir, – Eric Rauchway‘s review of Benn Steil‘s book The Battle of Bretton Woods contains a common mistake about my grandfather, Whittaker Chambers. (Read more)
Nov 21, 2011 0
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The Invisible Harry Gold:
The Man Who Gave the Soviets the Atom Bomb
Allen M. Hornblum
(New Haven, Yale University Press, 2010)
[This article appears on pp. 116-117, Summer/Fall 2011 issue, Volume 18, Number 3, of The Intelligencer magazine, published by the Association of Foreign Intelligence Officers (AFIO)]
In The Invisible Harry Gold, author Allen M. Hornblum lets the story speak for itself. Nevertheless, undercurrents of irony exude throughout Harry Gold’s tale. While people like FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called him a “master Soviet spy” (p. ix), Mr. Hornblum attributes the secret to Gold’s success to his lack of personality.
Nov 19, 2011 0
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Red Conspirator: J. Peters and the American Communist Underground
By Thomas Sakmyster
(Champagne: University of Illinois Press, March 2011)
[This article appears on pp. 118-119 the Summer/Fall 2011 issue, Volume 18, Number 3, of The Intelligencer magazine, published by the Association of Foreign Intelligence Officers (AFIO) It is also a revision of the version which appeared earlier in The American Mercury.]
America has had to wait long to learn more about the mysterious J. Peters, reputed head of Soviet espionage in Washington in the 1930s.
Nov 18, 2011 2
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The Fear Within
Spies, Commies, and American Democracy on Trial
By Scott Martelle
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011)
[This article appears on pp. 117-118 in the Summer/Fall 2011 issue, Volume 18, Number 3, of The Intelligencer magazine, published by the Association of Foreign Intelligence Officers [AFIO)]
In The Fear Within, Scott Martelle writes about a pre-McCarthy trial, which helped set the tone of the 1950s: Dennis v US. He mines his subject well. The nuggets he turns up command far more than a glimmer’s glance.
May 11, 2011 0
In an interview syndicated in The American Conservative from Australia’s National Observer, American author Elena Maria Vidal discusses why we hear about McCarthyism and its excesses but not so much about the Hiss case.
Apr 4, 2011 0
Miles Gone By
William F. Buckley, Jr.
(Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004)
By my last count, more than two thirds of the books published by William F. Buckley, Jr., contain references to Whittaker Chambers.
The majority of these references are re-workings of previous material — from a surprisingly few number of original pieces, if one checks.
Miles Gone By falls into a smaller group within those: a simple reprinting of “un-reworked” work, as it were. In this case, Buckley republished the final chapter from Odyssey of a Friend: Whittaker Chambers’ Letters to William F. Buckley, Jr., 1954-1961 (1969).
Mar 27, 2011 0
Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture
Mark Feldstein
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)
What former U.S. president attempted the assassination of a prominent American journalist?
Author Mark Feldstein drops readers into an exciting moment in history as a prologue to his new book, Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture. The former journalist, now journalism professor packages his extensive research into the lives of U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and columnist Jack Anderson. Any mention of Richard Nixon’s career is likely to bring up the name “Whittaker Chambers,” and Feldstein’s book is no exception.
