Elizabeth Bentley was born in Connecticut in 1907, raised by Republican, Episcopalian parents, who passed away prematurely before 1925. She attended Vassar on a full scholarship, did postgraduate work at Columbia University, and had a graduate fellowship at University of Florence. Despite being a seemingly normal American young woman, she was intrigued by Communism and ultimately joined the Soviet Union as a spy. Elizabeth Bentley has an intriguing story, examined in great detail by both Kathryn Olmstead and Lauren Kessler in Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley and Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered in The McCarthy Era, respectively. An important point to understand about Bentley is that she had a tendency to mislead …show more content…
However, Olmstead reveals the falsity of this claim, showing that Bentley’s several trips to Europe, particularly Italy, that swayed her towards Fascism, and then Anti-fascism . Bentley was described by her classmates as a social misfit, plain-faced, unusually tall (over 5’9”), and lonely. While in Italy, she was able to shed her New England, Republican upbringing. Olmstead discusses her experiences with alcoholism, a promiscuous sex life, and a suicide attempt. It was while in Italy that Bentley "developed her lifelong taste for political extremism," and her lifelong compulsion for "breaking the rules and deceiving the authorities" (pg 7) . Her advisor at University of Florence was a leading anti-fascist, and also provided a romantic mentorship. Furthermore, it was here that Bentley developed more extreme self-delusion when she took credit for a master 's thesis actually written by one of her advisor 's other students …show more content…
Chambers met with the Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle and named eighteen current and former government employees as spies or fellow travelers . This information was not validated until Bentley herself corroborated in 1945, and remained a low priority for the FBI. The significance of this at the time, however, was that the Justice Department subpoenaed Golos for passport fraud, which meant he could no longer use his business for espionage and needed not only a new front, but also a new assistant to operate as both courier and case officer
In the beginning of McCarthy’s political career, he was already walking on thin ice. He launched a series of charges against the government. The first charge was against the communist global apparatus. McCarthy said that the organization had made a sustained attempt to penetrate the United States government and attempt to subvert its foreign policy decisions. The second charge was against the United States government itself. McCarthy said that the official defenses against foreign penetration ranged from weak to nonexistent. The third and final charge was against the government of America, ...
The American Revolution was a time when colonial peoples were forced to develop a Patriot identity separate from that of the British. The evolution of espionage provides a paradigm case to support the shift in identity. The role of espionage is really only seen through the eyes of the British and the Patriots, the loyalists in the colonies are absent from the narrative. This paper argues that the use of espionage during the American revolution and the consequences that it brought developed a distinct American identity by analyzing the societal benefit it played in the colonies (the motivation that drove American’s to spy), the exclusion of members with loyalist sympathies found by John Honeyman and Enoch Crosby and its reputation within the colonial side.
Hall, Claire M. An Army of Spies? The Gestapo Spy Network 1933-45, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Apr., 2009)
On June 19, 1953, there came an end to what would become known as “the trial of the century”. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted for being Soviet spies and leaking crucial information about the creation of atomic weapons to the Soviet Union. They were sentenced to death and executed by use of the electric chair, leaving behind two orphaned children. However, they have never admitted to committing this crime and their involvement in the leaking of the so-called Manhattan Project was never thoroughly proved. Their execution came to be known as one of the main events characteristic of the Cold War environment in the United States of the 1950s, which was influenced by the phenomenon of McCarthyism. This essay will examine the Rosenberg Case up close. It will first look at the course of their trial. Then it will take a step back and describe the Cold War environment in which the trial took place, which was being dominated by anti-communist sentiment, the Red Scare and Joseph McCarthy. In combining these two sections, this essay will seek to explain how the Rosenberg Case neglected American values of freedom and tolerance, and how this neatly fitted the environment of the Cold War.
Kathryn S. Olmsted, author of the book, Real Enemies, is an accomplished historian. Olmsted currently is head of the history department at UC Davis. She has been teaching at UC Davis since 2003, and a lecturer at UC Davis from 1993-2001 (Department of History). Kathryn S. Olmsted also has a wide background of educational studies; a Bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford University, Master’s degree in history from UC Davis, and she received her Ph.D. in history from UC Davis (Department of History). Olmsted has written several articles for many well-respected publications; the topics have consistently been the history of the United States and its government’s secrets (Department of History). Real Enemies is her third book discussing conspiracies in U.S. history. Other books she has wr...
Since the 1950s, most Americans have condemned the McCarthyite witch-hunts and show trials. By large majorities, Americans oppose firing communists from their jobs or banning communist speakers or books.[2] But over the past several years, increasing numbers of historians, writers and intellectuals have sought to minimize, explain away and justify McCarthyism. A spate of books and articles touting new historical evidence has tried to demonstrate that communism posed a real danger to American society in the 1940s and 1950s. They argue that even if some innocent people suffered and McCarthy was reckless, he was responding to a real threat.[3] As a result, Joe McCarthy doesn't look so irresponsible in hindsight.
"The Red Scare: McCarthyism." Essortment Articles: Free Online Articles on Health, Science, Education & More... Web. 29 Dec. 2011. .
...o recruited sources with access to American counterintelligence investigations in order to monitor the danger its agents faced and to warn them when they were in trouble. While a handful of spies in the American government were mercenaries, paid foreigners, most of them were actually Communists who took little profit for their activities but willingly supplied information out of devotion to the Soviet Union (pg 291).
Beginning in the early 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy released a monumental rampage across the United States. For fear of governmental infiltration by Communists, an outbreak of accusations swept the nation as a result of the Wisconsin senator, and helped create what is known as the second Red Scare (“McCarthyism”)
Schrecker, Ellen. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford of St. Martin's, 1994. Print.
American politician Joseph McCarthy led a campaign against Communist subversion in the early 1950’s. McCarthy charged several high-ranking officials with subversive activities. Then, as chairman of the Senate subcommittee on investigations, McCarthy continued inquiry into subversive activities in the U.S. He created much controversy with his allegations, which were more like a modern day political “witch hunt”. American...
With her son’s life hanging in the balance, Mary Ewald conveys the importance of setting her son free to her audience, President Saddam Hussein, by telling him personal facts, making her son seem harmless and appealing to the leader’s religion and way of life. Ewald keeps a matter of fact and informatory tone in the first the paragraphs before switching to a more desperate and pleading tone at the end to really convey the importance of letting her son go.
In this paper I will talk about some information that I have obtained from reading Mary Piphers, Reviving Ophelia, Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls and give my view on some of her main points and arguments. I also will discuss why I feel Mary Pipher’s views on the toxic influence of media are accurate, and that it does affect adolescent girls. This paper will also point out the importance of Mary Pipher’s studies on the problems that today’s female teens are facing and why I feel they are important and cannot be ignored.
Since the dawn of time, the desire for immortality and eternal beauty has all but governed humans as a species. A fallacy that such a thing could be procured as the proverbial fountain of youth has consumed, destroyed, and even sent some into a spiraling descent of madness. From the destitute to the affluent and everyone between, no one has ever fully escaped the hypnotic lure of the notion of being forever young and beautiful. The journey to acquire such an unattainable object has even motivated some to implement unspeakable and deplorable acts against their own kind. One individual in particular, a late Hungarian Countess by the name of Elizabeth Bathory, is a perfect example of lust for perfection and beauty taken too far.
The discovery of Klaus Fuchs’s espionage, more so than the news of Soviet nuclear test, marked the start of the Cold War and a worsening of Soviet-American relations. The case again raised the American public’s feelings against Communism. Similarly, it caused a cooling of Anglo-American relations, and dashed hopes of Britain to cooperate with America on nuclear projects in the future. In addition, Britain paid notice to the “incompetence which constitute the history of the British security” for the MI5 cleared Fuchs at least eight times. The British public asked in shock, “How did Dr. Fuchs, a confessed Communist, get away with it for seven years? Why did the tip that led to his arrest have to come from the United Stated Federal Bureau of Investigation rather than from the M. I. 5?” As result, “loud demands were being made today for a thorough overhaul of Britain’s security arrangements as a result of… the trial of Dr. Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs,” including a reorganization of “anti-espionage precautions at all the secret establishments,” an reexamination of “personal records of all the 3,000 persons employed at the atomic energy plants,” and doubts about “whether the policy of granting asylum to political refugees would be