Free The Rebuttal: Defending 'American Betrayal' From the Book-Burners by Diana West Page A

    THE
AGGRESSIVELY ATTACKED DETAIL #3: TRUMAN AND VENONA
    So far, the aggressive attacks on
detail and my credibility seem calculated to protect Harry Hopkins from
consideration as an agent of Soviet influence.
    In this section, the attacks on my
credibility are also about protecting Harry Truman.
    From what? From knowledge about
Venona. Or, rather, from the American people weighing evidence that as
president, Harry Truman received specific allegations of Soviet infiltration of
the US government and did nothing – and even elevated at least one such
person (Harry Dexter White), while the Truman White House and Justice
Department explored pressing perjury charges against a key witness to Soviet
espionage inside the US government (Whittaker Chambers).
      This, as I argue, is a high point in the
American history of betrayal.
    But I confess, on writing American Betrayal , I only knew the half
of it.
    Finally, I can thank Radosh for one
piece of criticism that is constructive. Too bad for him, however, that as a
result I can more completely demolish this particular critique of American Betrayal . Having done further
research, I now find it much easier to punch through the frail edifice he has
built around Harry Truman’s purity when it comes to forbidden knowledge of
Soviet infiltration.
    This particular controversy under
consideration here kicked off a decade ago when Jerrold and Leona Schecter
published their book Sacred Secrets: How
Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History. Drawing from the
recollections of a noted code-breaker and Venona program official, Oliver
Kirby, the Schecters laid out the case that Truman as president was informed
about the findings of Venona codebreakers, certainly by 1950, when codebreakers
identified Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss as spies.
    Radosh sets up his discussion on
Venona and Truman like so:
    “If
Harry Truman, who became president in 1945, knew about the Venona decrypts
(first de-classified in 1995), yet failed to pay attention to the evidence they
provided of Soviet infiltration, it would bolster West’s claim that Truman was
so anxious to avoid offending Stalin that even when confronted with hard
evidence of Soviet treachery, he chose to do nothing about it.”
    For the record, Radosh has already
and again attributed to me something else I didn’t write. Yes, I agree the
evidence shows Truman was informed and did nothing about Soviet intelligence
operations he learned about through the Venona project and, more important,
through the FBI.
    Nowhere in my book, however, did I
write anywhere that Truman failed to act for fear of “offending Stalin.” There
were other reasons. Radosh’s sloppy habits continue.
    Why is the FBI more important here
than Venona? It turns out that when I was writing American Betrayal I overlooked a truckload of FBI briefs and memos
that J. Edgar Hoover sent to Truman and other senior administration officials beginning in 1945. These FBI documents
alerted the president and his men to the presence of multiple American traitors
in the federal government. Had I included this ample FBI evidence in American Betrayal, which M. Stanton
Evans presents in Blacklisted by History , [11] I could have established virtually without doubt the argument now driving
Radosh into attack-mode: Truman Knew.
    The detail under aggressive Radosh
attack in this section is the former Venona/NSA official Oliver Kirby.
    The Schecters recount several
meetings Kirby described or took part in.
    Here are two of them in brief.
    MEETING
1
    The first meeting sourced to Kirby took
place on June 4, 1945, between Gen. Carter W. Clarke and Col. Ernest Gibson,
both of Army intelligence, and Truman, and it lasted 15 minutes. (That the
meeting took place has been verified.) While the G-2 officers could offer
neither specific names nor operations to the president, they brought bad news
nonetheless: As the Schecters write (source Kirby), “Clarke told the president
that… initial