Read more
Zusatztext "Indispensable....Here is definitive evidence! a small arsenal of smoking guns! documenting the clandestine work of 58 American agents....The evidence presented in The Haunted Wood ends the old did-they-or-didn't-they debate--."--Los Angeles Times "A new look at what communist spies were really up to in this country before and during World War II--."--The New York Times "Packed with plenty of intriguing characters and cloak-and-dagger tales of secrecy! subversion and betrayal."--Publishers Weekly Informationen zum Autor Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev Klappentext Drawing upon previously secret KGB records released exclusively to Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood reveals for the first time the riveting story of Soviet espionage's "golden age" in the United States, from the 1930s through the early cold war.Tucked into a quiet side street a few blocks from Moscow's notorious Lubyanka prison and the grimy buildings of the Soviet Union's KGB stands an unmarked four-story house, until recently the Press Bureau of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (or SVR). From 1994 to 1996, my Russian co-author, Alexander Vassiliev, and I pursued research on The Haunted Wood in this sanctum of secrets through a unique 1993 agreement between Random House and the SVR's "old boy" organization of former KGB agents, the Association of Retired Intelligence Officers (ARIO). In return for payments made to that group, the SVR agreed to permit Vassiliev, a journalist who had once worked for Soviet intelligence, and me substantial and exclusive access to Stalin-era operational files of the KGB and its predecessor agencies. Our contract allowed Vassiliev, who had retired from the KGB in 199o because of his opposition to Soviet leadership, to review archived documents and to make summaries or verbatim transcriptions from the files, including their record numbers. The documentary material, organized into topical areas, was then submitted to a panel of the SVR's leading officials for review and eventual release. Throughout this process, I worked alongside Vassiliev during more than two dozen visits to Moscow: monitoring the information found, prodding the SVR to expedite release of material submitted, and organizing Western primary and secondary research data essential to the book. As relations between the United States and Russia grew strained, the SVR became less cooperative about providing timely release of the reviewed documentary materials. By late 1995, there were no more releases, and SVR officials had begun to express concern about the extensive and revealing data previously turned over: "The problem is that you know too much," one leading official told me while examining a gift copy of an earlier book of mine, Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case. In 1996, Alexander Vassiliev accepted a journalist's assignment abroad and moved with his family to England. By that time we had received a critical mass of the , released KGB material. Using Vassiliev's initial draft and translations while incorporating new Western documentation, I wrote the English-language manuscript, and Vassiliev is now preparing The Haunted Wood's Russian-language edition. The book was not submitted for SVR scrutiny before publication. During many visits to Moscow, I benefited also from the SVR's hospitality, which increased my knowledge of Soviet intelligence practices. Often, I was hosted in the Press Bureau's plush upstairs dining and reception rooms by General Vadim Kirpichenko, head of the senior officials' influential advisory group to then-SVR Director Yevgeny Primakov (now Russia's Prime Minister) and by General (then Colonel) Yuri Kobaladze, chief of the Press Bureau and Russian intelligence's public relations mastermind. Occasionally, Director Primakov himself would join these luncheons or dinners, which always provoked spirited discussion of c...
