Post 5: The Red, Scary Rosenbergs (and Friends)

During the Red Scare, people were very right and very wrong all at once. They were right that there were some Soviet spies in the United States, and they were often recruited from the American Communist Party, as many Americans feared. But somehow McCarthy & co. managed to find everyone that wasn’t a Soviet spy and put them on trial. Only through strokes of luck and/or conscience did Americans actually find any spies.

In the early 20th century, Americans were terrified that Communism would seize control of their country. In reality, though, there was no nation less threatened by a Communist takeover. No Communist politician had a chance to gain any kind of influence, and, Powers explains in Intelligence Wars, “among the Communist parties of the world few were smaller, poorer, or weaker than the CP-USA” (109). So the fear of a Communist America was unfounded.

Though the Communists were unlikely to ever gain significant political control, there were a handful of Soviet spies within our borders. Many of these were uncovered through the Soviet VENONA traffic which the CIA managed to crack because the Soviets did not take the necessary precautions to make their ciphers sound. They were reusing the keys to encrypt their messages, so they were less secure and easier for the Americans to crack. This lucky moment of Soviet laziness came about just as three major Soviet spies defected to the United States: Igor Gouzenko, Elizabeth Bentley, and Whittaker Chambers. Each of these spies indicated others (Powers 111). Really, this was a huge triumph for intelligence, but it actually added fuel to people’s fears. Rather than feeling reassured that the spies were being captured, people were afraid these spies were only the tip of the iceberg. Powers explains that in the 1950s, “when the average American first started to worry about Communists in government, the Soviet spy threat was largely over” (113). Reality, though, rarely seems to affect public opinion.

There were several real breaches of security surrounding nuclear technology. Clarence Hiskey worked on the Manhattan Project in Chicago, where the first reactors were designed, and he was a Soviet agent. Alan Nunn May was a British scientist working on the joint American-British heavy water project in Canada. He actually gave a sample of U-235 to the Soviets. Most famous, though, are the Rosenbergs. David Greenglass was a soldier at Los Alamos that passed information and pictures to his sister Ethel and her husband Julius Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs then turned that information over the Soviets (Powers 65). They were executed for treason. At the time there was an outcry because people thought they were innocent. As further documents have been declassified, it has become clear that they were guilty.

Then there was Oppenheimer. He was approached by his friend Chevalier and asked to provide classified information to the Soviets (Cassidy 280). He claimed he did not give any information, but he did not give a full account of the approach immediately, and that was suspicious. Personally, Oppenheimer had ties to the Communist party all over the place. His brother and wife were former Communists, he had a love affair with a Communist, and had been approached by Communists. He swore up and down that he was not a Communist and did not give any information to the Soviets, and General Groves, the military head of the Manhattan Project, believed him. Others did not believe him. He was stripped of his security clearance, but most historians now agree that it was likely because he was not enthusiastically supportive of the H-Bomb, not because he was a spy (Powers 66).