All told, some 350 Americans turn out to have worked for Soviet intelligence during World War II — a
time when we were allies. American counter-intelligence eventually identified more than 125 of these
agents — but were never able to nail down who the other 200 plus were. Virtually every one of the people
accused of being a Soviet agent by Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers — both reviled and
denounced for making false charges not only by political partisans in the 1940s but by historians ever since
— turns out to have been a Soviet spy.
No Federal agency was immune to Soviet penetration. There were at least 16 Soviet agents in the OSS,
predecessor to the CIA, including Duncan Lee, chief counsel to General William Donovan. The Office of
war Information, the Board of Economic Warfare, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration, War Production Board, War Department, Signal Corps, Censorship office, the Justice
Department were all penetrated. In the State Department Alger Hiss was not the only Soviet spy. Larry
Duggan, in charge of Latin American affairs, was an agent. Lauchlin Currie, one of six presidential
assistants, provided information. The most highly placed spy was Harry Dexter White, the number two man
the Treasury Department and one of the architects of the post-war international financial order — he
designed the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Bretton Woods agreement. The KGB so
valued White’s information — including meetings at the founding UN conference where he revealed the
American negotiating strategy — that when he hinted at leaving government service because of financial
pressures, the KGB offered to pay his daughter’s college tuition.
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