Free Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by Harvey Klehr;John Earl Haynes;Alexander Vassiliev

Forest." I had also found Anatoly Gorsky's list with cover names and real
names. Moreover, a few documents contained real names either in the
text or in the margins. (I am much more comfortable with the convention
adopted in this book, where the original cover names are retained in quotations and the real names added in brackets on the first occurrence (not
replacing the cover name) just so the reader does not get confused as to
who is "Pilot," who is "Aileron," and so on.)

    The second allegation: "The co-authors, said Labusov, `were wrong
when they put the name of Alger Hiss in the places where they tell about
somebody who cooperated with Soviet special services, yes? So we are
quite right in saying that we, the Russian intelligence service, have no
documents ... proving that Alger Hiss cooperated with our service somewhere or anywhere.-
    That was a lie too. I found documents mentioning Alger Hiss under
his real name in a context that made it clear he had taken part in Soviet
espionage. And where did I get the quotations? There could be only one
conclusion from what Labusov had said about me: I invented them.
    The third allegation, another quote from Labusov: "`Mr. Vassiliev
worked in our press service just here in Moscow, but, if he's honest, he
will surely tell you that he never met the name of Alger Hiss in the context of some cooperation with some special services of the Soviet Union."'
Now it was about my personal honesty.
- - - -- - - - -- -- - -
    The fourth allegation was made by Lowenthal himself: "He [Alger
Hiss] got the cover name `Lawyer' from Weinstein and Vassiliev." Not at
all. Hiss got his cover name from Soviet operatives, and I didn't invent it.
(In this book we have translated this cover name as "Jurist.") And the
allegation was repeated in Lowenthal's review on Amazon.com. By this time The Haunted Wood was the most important thing I had done in my
professional career. The book had changed the lives of my wife, my son,
and myself. We had left our native country. Now someone was saying the
book was a lie and I was a liar. I wanted to sue everyone: Lowenthal, Intelligence and National Security, Amazon.com, the Foreign Intelligence
Service, New York University. I thought Lowenthal had simply fooled the
British Universities Film and Video Council, and it probably didn't know
what it had gotten into. I didn't want the council's blood. I sent it a letter,
and it immediately removed the article from its site.

    I couldn't afford a lawyer, and I went to the High Court of Justice in
London (only the High Court hears defamation cases in England) to get
help and advice. A lawyer there heard my story and said that I had a case.
He suggested I get in touch with some legal firms in London since some
of them might be interested in handling my case on a no win, no fee basis.
I did, and they weren't. I decided to file suit on my own as a litigant in person (in the following two years I learned a lot of new English words). I
went to a book shop and purchased some books as guides. I dropped the
SVR from my list since the idea of bringing Russian spies to justice
seemed a bit supernatural. Where would I send my claim? To the SVR
station chief in London? Well, what was his name? Also, I had nothing
against Boris Labusov personally. I knew him as a decent man, and I knew
he was just doing his job.
    I also dropped New York University and John Lowenthal from the
suit. The university seemed a difficult case since it was in America, where
the defamation law was far more relaxed than in England. As to Lowenthal, I decided to deal with him later, after I finished with Amazon.com,
which had a branch in Britain, and Frank Cass, the British publisher of
Intelligence and National Security. According to the defamation law of
England and Wales, the fact that these two had repeated what Boris
Labusov had allegedly said didn't give them immunity from prosecution.
It would have made my case much