A traitor who had FDR’s ear to whisper in.

The more arrows slung at Diana West for her thorough research in American Betrayal, that uncovers some of the most egregious breaches of US national security during FDR years and afterwards, the more we become enlightened by facts dug up by Diana herself and her supporters as they rally in defense of her. Thank Andy for this latest treat.

NOTE: Ron Radosh has made great hash of Harry Hopkins role as ‘agent 19′, Diana says otherwise, that he was indeed a crucial player in spying for the Soviets as FDR’s closet adviser. Andrew Bostom proves that other serious scholars took note of Hopkins’ role as key spy and notorious traitor, making Radosh’s bellicose rants at Diana West for her position on Hopkins as being agent 19, crass and foolish.

More definite than surmises about No. 19 was the revelation of KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky that Hopkins had been named in Russia as a Soviet intelligence agent. In a book by British historian Christopher Andrew, Gordievsky was quoted as recalling a lecture by veteran KGB operative Iskhak Akhmerov, a longtime “illegal” in the United States operating under a commercial cover. In this lecture, Akhmerov discussed his relationship with Alger Hiss and other Soviet agents but said that “the most important Soviet war-time agent in the United States” was Hopkins.

FDR’s Traitor?

Andrew G. Bostom

A controversy has re-ignited over Franklin Delano Roosevelt “co-President” Harry Hopkins’s potential role as an agent promoting Soviet influence operations during World War II. Diana West, in her new book, American Betrayal (and summarized here), makes the case that Hopkins was a conscious agent; Ronald Radosh rejects this contention .

The career trajectory of the late Herbert Romerstein (who died May 7, 2013), Cold War authority par excellence, was encapsulated by his obituarist, Professor Paul Kengor, as follows:

Herb knew the Cold War and communist movement unlike anyone. He understood it because he lived it and breathed it. Born in Brooklyn in 1931, he himself had been a communist, having joined the Communist Youth League before becoming a card-carrying member of Communist Party USA (CPUSA). He broke ranks over 60 years ago, the final straw being the Korean War, which made clear to him that he was dealing with inveterate liars, whether in Korea, Moscow, or among communists on the home-front. He went on to become one of America’s best anti-communists and most respected authorities, regularly testifying before Congress. He became a chief investigator for the House Committee on Internal Security. In the 1980s, he joined the Reagan administration, where his full-time job at the U.S. Information Agency was to counter Soviet disinformation, a duty for which few were so well-equipped or enthusiastic. He relished the role of taking on professional Soviet propagandists such as Georgi Arbatov and Valentin Falin. Later, he did the highly touted analysis of the Venona transcripts, which he published as The Venona Secrets.

Romerstein’s final work, Stalin’s Secret Agents, co-authored with journalist and Cold War era scholar, M. Stanton Evans, was just published in this past November, 2012.

After enumerating a litany of Harry Hopkins’s pro-Soviet activities, on  pp. 113-119 of  Stalin’s Secret Agents, Romerstein and Evans offer this self-evident summary assessment:

The obvious net meaning of these episodes is that Hopkins was a zealous advocate for Stalin. [emphasis added]

They segue immediately from this recounting of Hopkins’s “zealous advocacy” for the Soviet dictator, to their own discussion of the distinct likelihood that Hopkins was KGB agent 19.

More here.