The Cambridge Spies, by Verne W. Newton

...In that capacity, Maclean helped sabotage U.S...

...But Maclean's reports made Stalin aware of the U.S...

...lack, while Washington had no knowledge whatsoever of the actual Soviet supply...

...He also shows, in effect, that Philby's intelligence led directly to the serious loss of American lives...

...Herbert Zweibon, Chairman Americans For A Safe Israel New York, New York Defending De Gaulle Something more might perhaps have been said on the subject of Charles de Gaulle's alleged or real anti-Americanism in a review devoted to his career (review of Jean Lacouture's De Gaulle, by Mark Falcoff, TAS, July 1991...

...In other words, America does not need a CIA...

...In retrospect, it is amazing how much the West could have learned back in 1940 from former intelligence agent Walter G. Krivitsky, the first major Soviet defector...

...Newton's solid grasp of this history puts the Cambridge group's espionage in context, a formidable achievement...

...Fax, phone, or mail your insertion orders by October 9 to: fax: 703/243-6814 phone: 703/243-3733 The American Spectator Attn: John Funk, Ad Mgr...

...Should any of these journalists subsequently try to join the British government, Krivitsky warned, that man very well might be the unknown Soviet agent...

...Because of Maclean," Newton points out, "Stalin knew he had nothing to fear from America...

...Andrew Boyles The Fourth Man, Phillip Knightley's Philby, and John Costello's penetrating Mask of Theacheryconcentrate on the British world from which they emerged, and the paths they followed to their careers with the Soviet secret service...

...He simply knew that the United States was incapable of launching either a conventional or atomic response to his weapons...

...military power was in fact limited—and making a show of force over Berlin was next to impossible...

...would fight if threatened, and where it would stay out, since, as Maclean phrased it in his notes on the meetings, it was said "if the Soviets know where the holdline is drawn, they will move on what isn't protected like any predatory animal...

...some have suggested that the Soviets got little for their effort...

...Characteristically, he seeks reasons in the biographies of the perpetrators and asks himself what happened to George Lucas between the two films...

...But Grenier's search for meaning in biography never degenerates into ad hominem attacks...

...Montand told Grenier that he had never read a word of Marx but had become a Marxist after seeing Sergei Eisenstein's film The Battleship Potemkin...

...to cover up—that the damage Maclean and his group wrought was enormous...

...The impression that he was an enemy and even a dangerous enemy of the United States was certainly widespread in the American media in the late 1960s...

...U.S...

...These notes, as Newton puts it, "must have made spellbinding reading in Moscow...

...2020 N. 14th Street, Ste...

...How well grounded was de Gaulle's mistrust of Roosevelt we gather from the memoirs of Anthony Eden, who claims to have dissuaded Roosevelt from seeking to redraw the northeastern frontiers of France in a post-war settlement...

...access to their uranium from the Congo...

...If espionage was simply a game, the revisionist argument runs, then counterintelligence and American efforts to deal with it are in themselves a frivolous endeavor...

...As the Brits' atomic-energy man in the U.S., Newton tells us, Maclean could "enter and move around [the Atomic Energy Commission] at will with no escort" and had access to classified material—access denied even J. Edgar Hoover...

...As Stalin sought access to the Black Sea Straits, Maclean tried to drive a wedge between the British and Americans...

...How convenient for Friedman that his longtime pro-Arab bias (as demonstrated by his public association with the pro-PLO "Middle East Peace Group" at Brandeis) now meshes so neatly with his desire to "work for the State Department" by loyally promoting Baker's own pro-Arab agenda...

...But three of the spies—Philby, Guy Burgess, and Donald Maclean—were posted to the United States for a time, and Verne W. Newton's The Cambridge Spies is the first book to uncover the sordid story of their dealings at the British embassy between 1945 and 1951...

...That could stand as a paradigm for the Gramscian thesis, and it's Grenier's message as well...

...Before deciding to enter Korea, Mao knew that his vital industrial and strategic resources were immune to counterattack, and that his enemy would not, despite threats, deploy the A-bomb against Chinese targets...

...And Belgian Communists set out to use this data in their active propaganda campaign against the United States...

...At these sessions it was determined where the U.S...

...Maclean's work justifies Newton's claim that "it is doubtful that any other Soviet agent in the postwar period . . . served Moscow more ably than Maclean...

...Just how much damage he did has long been unclear...

...Peking and Moscow," Newton writes, "knew that theywere fighting almost a risk-free war...

...Don't miss a chance to encourage American Spectator readers to purchase your best new release/backlist titles as holiday gifts...

...from the open criticism of American intervention in Vietnam during his visit to Cambodia in 1964...

...For Stalin, this was evidence that Washington meant to exclude the Soviet Union from any role in the Asian subcontinent—so Stalin encouraged his cadres to link up with nascent Asian nationalist movements...

...That Stalin eventually blundered and overplayed his hand was due to his own particular madness, not to a position of Western supremacy...

...He had worked on the very issues that defined the Cold War: "the Black Sea Straits, East-West troop levels, bases, and the West's atomic stockpile...

...By injecting the fate of the Katanga mines into Belgium's daily political life," Newton writes, "[the Soviets] were able to manipulate the fall of the Brussels government...

...CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 7) Brandeis University, Friedman was quoted in the campus newspaper, the Brandeis Justice (on February 11, 1975), as saying that his goal was to "work at the Middle East desk" of the State Department...

...The new "relevance" (in the Gramscian sense) of such makers of culture as Lucas tells a lot about the direction the culture is moving in and why: These people are both the effect and the cause of the movement of society away from its historical moorings...

...Yet when Kim Philby–l'under specific instructions from Moscow—penetrated British intelligence, they embraced him as one of their own...

...History moves, but it is not God...

...Maclean gained access to all cables and reports coming to the British embassy in 1946...

...Most of the books on them—e.g...

...The evidence for Maclean's involvement is circumstantial but overwhelming...

...Change is expected, but is understood in cause-and-effect terms rather than those of metaphysical inevitability...

...He quotes Daniel Yergin, who wrote some years back that, during the Berlin confrontation, the Russians would have had to back down, since the U.S...

...access to uranium deposits in the Congo...

...It is a tremendous opportunity to sell your high quality editorial product to an audience with a proven propensity to purchase books...

...It was presumably consistent with de Gaulle's desire for an independent foreign and defense policy that he should have wished to place forces under a wholly French command...

...That was not the estimate of major American political and military leaders at the time: General Marshall told the NSC right before the Czech coup that the world was "playing with fire, while we have nothing with which to put it out...

...His book centers on Maclean, who had the longest stint at the embassy, was the senior and most experienced diplomat there, and managed to do the worst damage...

...No attentive reader of this book will consider that argument tenable any longer...

...was militarily stronger, and did have sole possession of nuclear weapons...

...These phony documents were passed to Drew Pearson through his aide—a former Communist named David Karr—and appeared in Pearson's syndicated column...

...Reading about the time Bertolt Brecht's mistress, Ruth Berlau, chased Grenier down a flight of stairs screaming "Filthy A virtual industry has grown up around tracing the dramatic careers of the Cambridge spies of the 1930s, led by the illustrious Kim Philby and found to include, most recently, the famed art critic and keeper of the Queen's gallery, the late Sir Anthony Blunt...

...S ome of the fascination of this book comes from Grenier's personal acquaintance with many of his subjects...

...Verne W. Newton has worked out as much as can be possibly known about the espionage of three British gentlemen in the United States...

...Stalin, in other words, knew when to threaten and when to bluff...

...from his attempt to restore the gold standard and replace the dollar as a reserve currency...

...the memo revealed that American policy would be to respect French desires in Indochina and British control of Burma...

...that he should have sought to resolve the problems of currency exchange and liquidity, in the (continued on page 49) ! ! !BOOK PUBLISHERS...

...The Soviets then proceeded with classic disinformation, lacing classified cables with fabrications "intended to portray Stalin as a reasonable and compassionate man...

...In the process, he has utterly discredited the revisionists who argue that Cold War espionage was a useless game that did little harm...

...In truth, says Newton, "America's atomic arsenal was nonexistent," and Stalin knew it when he upped the ante in Berlin...

...The December 1991 American Spectator featuring the near legendary Holiday Book Section will focus readers on the joys of your product—BOOKS...

...Maclean's role in the diplomatic game was to "foul the machinery of Western foreign policy" and to sow "confusion and distrust among Anglo-American diplomats...

...Through Maclean's membership in the CPC, he was able to give the Soviets secret information about uranium movements, contracts, and quantities...

...that he should have sought to preserve French interests —however far-sightedly or otherwise—in what had until only ten years earlier been French Indochina...

...The arousal of Belgian nationalist passion against the United States was the only way possible to force Belgium to cut off its uranium supply to America...

...I recall a cartoon in the Los Angeles Times depicting his empty grave, with a caption openly deploring that it had been empty too long...

...In one essay he relates the experience of the French actor Yves Montand, who turned his back on Communism after a long dalliance...

...That historical sensibility enables Grenier, to cite one example, to observe and account for the differences between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back...

...Information leaked to C. L. Sulzberger of the New York Times enabled Molotov, at the Byrnes-Molotovmeetings in Paris, to accuse the U.S...

...If he finds a heavy dose of New Agemysticism in The Empire, he relates it to hard facts—for example, that the director whom Lucas chose, Irvin Kershner, believes in a number of occult teachings, including "The Force...

...Yet four of the signs, as they were taken to be, of his hostility to the United States can be explained far more plausibly in terms of de Gaulle's perception of France's national interests than as a paying off of personal scores and an avenging of the very real mistreatment which, as Mark Falcoff acknowledges, he and la France combattante had suffered at the hands of Roosevelt...

...Krivitsky told the British that one Soviet agent was a "young English journalist sent to Spain during the [Spanish Civil] War...

...adds a sense of immediacy as well as a bit of spice to what is already a succulent intellectual feast...

...American pig...

...He even had access to the secret memos of Admiral William Leahy, including one outlining military strategy to drive the Japanese out of Indochina...

...750 Arlington, VA 22201 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1991 47...

...Newton reveals that, in 1947, both the Soviets and the U.S...

...A s for Philby, Newton adds a few details to the discussions of his perfidy during the Korean War—in particular, that his and Maclean's efforts led the Chinese to move confidently into North Korea, since the Chinese felt safe from attack, due to the accounting of American strategy they got through Maclean...

...They don't play to Grenier's strength, which is the use of the historical and philosophical backgrounds of a cultural artifact to explain its meaning...

...Such background is important, for Grenier is one of the few modern analysts who do not see history as either static or invested with the Hegelian ability to define its own value...

...Maclean had been taking an active part in top-secret meetings with the Combined Policy Committee (CPC), which included Secretary of State George C. Marshall and Undersecretary Dean Acheson, as well as key scientists and British diplomats...

...Philby's colleagues simply could not accept that "proper British gentlemen can betray country and crown...

...Newton carefully refutes the argument of the Cold War revisionists—that Stalin merely responded to pressure the West was asserting from a position of strength...

...This was at the time, of course, when the U.S...

...had managed to keep its dependency secret, and had worked out an agreement with the British to receive Congolese uranium from Belgium...

...The newspapers were soon filled with exact weights, prices, and amounts of uranium shipped...

...America was dependent on foreign uranium, as was the Soviet Union...

...and from his open and indeed outrageous encouragement of French-Canadian separatism during his visit to Montreal in 1967...

...M aclean may also have been one of the Soviet Union's key atomic spies...

...Once again, "Maclean was able to provide the Kremlin with both the policy and operational options and decisions being made in London, Washington, and Tokyo...

...Here Newton again challenges the revisionists, who for a generation have argued that Mao's move into Korea was a foregone conclusion, and that the Truman Administration should have accepted Soviet and British overtures for a negotiated settlement...

...When Truman announced that he was sending sixty "atomic capable" B-29s to bases in Europe, it was Truman, not Stalin, who was bluffing...

...Soon afterwards, the Belgian Communists precipitated an international crisis by demanding to know whether their government had signed a secret treaty giving the U.S...

...and Britain of ganging up on the USSR, sabotaging the negotiations (and feeding the domestic agenda of the Henry Wallace "progressives" in the U.S...

...The shorter pieces in the second part of the book, originally published in the Washington Times, are not as compelling as the movie reviews in the first...

...Such films generally are financial failures in the United States (not Gandhi, of course), but find a more receptive audience overseas, especially in the European social democracies...

...confronted Stalin's expansionist strategy —one that included his move into Eastern Europe, his push for Persian Gulf oil, and his efforts to prevent the United States from obtaining African uranium...

...Newton reveals what the British in particular (but also the FBI and the State Department) have been anxious Ronald Radosh is professor of history at the City University of New York and co-author of The Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth...

...24.95 Ronald Radosh 46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1991 his participation in the top-secret talks that led to NATO...

...The U.S...

...But Maclean's coup de grace may have been THE CAMBRIDGE SPIES: THE UNTOLD STORY OF MACLEAN, PHILBY, AND BURGESS IN AMERICA Verne W. Newton/Madison Books/448 pp...

...Among Newton's other revelations are these: At the time of sensitive communications regarding Stalin's betrayal of the Yalta agreement on Poland, Maclean handed over secret messages sent by Churchill to Truman, messages that cast doubt on the popular belief that Harry Hopkins's mission to Stalin had ironed out the problems regarding Soviet control of Poland...

...were completely out of uranium...

...The real or perceived threat to American interests during the 1960s came from de Gaulle's withdrawal from the military wing of NATO, while remaining nominally within the Western alliance...