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Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered in the McCarthy EraBy Lauren Kessler
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Communists vilified her as a raging neurotic. Leftists dismissed her as a confused idealist. Her family pitied her as an exploited lover. Some said she was a traitor, a stooge, a mercenary, and a grandstander. To others she was a true American heroine -- fearless, principled, bold, and resolute. Congressional committees loved her. The FBI hailed her as an avenging angel. The Catholics embraced her. But the fact is, more than a half century after she captured the headlines as the "Red Spy Queen," Elizabeth Bentley remains a mystery.
New England-born, conservatively raised, and Vassar-educated, Bentley was groomed for a quiet life, a small life, which she explored briefly in the 1920s as a teacher, instructing well-heeled young women on the beauty of Romance languages at an East Coast boarding school. But in her mid-twenties she rejected both past and future and set herself on an entirely new course. In the 1930s she embraced communism and fell in love with an undercover KGB agent who initiated her into the world of espionage. By the time America plunged into World War II, Elizabeth Bentley was directing the operations of the two largest spy rings in America. Eventually, she had eighty people in her secret apparatus, half of them employees of the federal government. Her sources were everywhere: in the departments of Treasury and Commerce, in New Deal agencies, in the top-secret OSS (the precursor to the CIA), on congressional committees, even in the Oval Office.
When she defected in 1945 and told her story -- first to the FBI and then at a series of public hearings and trials -- she was catapulted to tabloid fame as the "Red Spy Queen," ushering in, almost single-handedly, the McCarthy Era. She was the government's star witness, the FBI's most important informer, and the darling of the Catholic anticommunist movement. Her disclosures and accusations put a halt to Russian spying for years and helped to set the tone of American postwar political life.
But who was she? A smart, independent woman who made her choices freely, right and wrong, and had the strength of character to see them through? Or was she used and manipulated by others?
Clever Girl is the definitive biography of a conflicted American woman and her controversial legacy. Set against the backdrop of the political drama that defined mid-twentieth century America, it explores the spy case whose explosive domestic and foreign policy repercussions have been debated for decades but not fully revealed -- until now.
- Sales Rank: #1779172 in Books
- Published on: 2003-08-05
- Released on: 2003-08-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x 1.06" w x 6.00" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 372 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Kessler (The Happy Bottom Riding Club: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes) gamely attempts to create a true-life romantic spy-thriller from the life of Elizabeth Bentley, who in 1945 confessed to being a Soviet spy, implicated Julius Rosenberg and many others and set America off on its journey through McCarthyism. Unfortunately, Kessler's attempt to draw tension and romance from Bentley's life fails amid a clutter of cameos, unexplored details and a superficial rendering of early Communist history in the U.S. Bentley is certainly an intriguing subject. A descendant of Puritans and educated at Vassar, she joined the Communist Party while a graduate student at Columbia in the Depression. She soon became a covert agent and fell in love with her KGB contact, Jacob Golos. When Golos died in her apartment and Bentley's position with the Russians deteriorated, she reached out to the FBI. Kessler is a fine writer, but her subjects just don't cooperate. Bentley's "romance" with the homely, secretive Golos is hardly romantic, and much early American Communist history is still obscured beneath the shroud of secrecy under which it operated. Finally, Bentley appears to have left little behind to aid in reliably reconstituting her life. Despite Kessler's best efforts, the result falls short as spy thriller, as biography and as history. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The KGB called her Clever Girl, an American spy who passed documents, gathered intelligence, and recruited Communist agents. The FBI might have dubbed Elizabeth Bentley "Pandora," because her grand jury and congressional testimony almost single-handedly blew the lid off a complex network of Soviet spies, thus unleashing the torrent of Communist paranoia that defined the 1940s and 1950s. Eventually abandoned and betrayed by her Party handlers, Bentley "came in from the cold" to start naming names, exposing scores of Communists working within the highest ranks of the federal government. Unlike her more notorious counterparts, Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss, Bentley remained an enigma. Was she a devious Mata Hari, knowingly and willingly sabotaging her country, or a gullible pawn, controlled by men she loved and admired? In this compelling and comprehensive biography, Kessler masterfully explores and exposes the myriad, competing facets of Bentley's tumultuous life. Whether she was lover or naif, patriot or spy, Bentley's various crises-of-conscience would ultimately bring down individuals and nearly topple a nation. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“A spellbinding tale of a woman who fell prey to her idealism.” (Library Journal)
“Compelling... Kessler masterfully explores and exposes the myriad, competing facets of Bentley’s tumultuous life.” (Booklist)
“Clever Girl vividly traces the dramatic life of New England blue blood Elizabeth Bentley.” (Elle)
“A brilliant portrait of [a] complicated personality.” (Eugene Weekly)
“Superb... [brings] to life the loneliness, the fear and the thrill of [Bentley’s] life as spy and anti-spy.” (Seattle Times)
“An insightful biography of an extraordinary American woman [and] a thrilling character-driven drama… Reads like good fiction…fascinating.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
“A well-paced and sympathetic chronicle.” (Boston Globe)
“Clever Girl lucidly and engagingly lays out the tragic arc of an unlikely and important life.” (The Onion)
“Kessler has written a book as compelling and fascinating as any novel. Clever Girl is the work of a master.” (Statesman Journal (Oregon))
“[A] thoughtful and well-researched biography.” (Cleveland Plain Dealer)
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