I take full responsibility for any errors in this manuscript. I researched this work without assistance. One advantage of working alone is that I was not advised that dealing with certain subjects might jeopardize certain benefits. I was not concerned about being denied tenure or being denied a government grant. Many “orthodox” historians do not have this luxury.
The major thesis of this book is agents of the Soviet Union had a significant impact on America’s foreign policy. This is not the orthodox view. Harvey Klehr has written:
"In our more than twenty years of archivally based research on Soviet espionage in America, we have uncovered ample documentation of Soviet intelligence obtaining American technical, military, and diplomatic information but very little indicating successful policy manipulation." 1
When queried on this matter Dr. Klehr responded, “The point of our comment was that we have not seen anything in Russian archives indicating that someone like White got told to try to manipulate policy. I am no expert on the Morgenthau Plan but my guess is that it was White acting on his own.” 2 Dr. Klehr might be considered a preeminent scholar in the field of Soviet infiltration of the U.S. government. However, I believe that this manuscript will demonstrate that his conclusions are incorrect. He did not have access to all of the Soviet files.
In a 1974 interview with Richard McKinzie of the Truman Library General Clay was highly critical of the Civil Affairs Branch. Clay stated: “We certainly went in there with a great number of people who were either members of the Communist party or tended in that direction. This was not the place nor the time for them. It did create some problems that took a long time to correct. Many of these men had come to us on Treasury teams. We ran into a tremendous opposition on the part of the Treasury if we attempted to change or remove any of these people.” www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/clayl.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment