Podcast appearances and mentions of alexander vassiliev

Whittaker Chambers This Podcast, the second to last, is the longest one.  The Hiss-Chambers Case did not die.  Many new facts were discovered, the majority of them harmful to Hiss, starting in the 1970s.  The Freedom of Information Act led the US government (after a lawsuit) to produce about 40,000 pages of paper, mostly from the FBI.  Hiss made the files of his defense counsel available to researchers.  One wonders if he knew what was in there, some of it was so damaging to him.  Most damaging in these and other files is powerful evidence that Hiss and his wife knew that the office typewriter they had had in the late 1930s was a Woodstock and that they had given it to The Catlett Kids, but they both denied such knowledge to the FBI, the Grand Jury (under oath), and even to their own ‘A List' attorneys, William Marbury and Edward McLean.  Other sources of information that opened late were the papers of Alger Hiss's brother Donald; a recollection of a fellow convict who spoke with Hiss in prison; the observations of a psychologist who testified for Hiss at the second trial (not Dr. Binger); the memoir of a document expert whom Chester Lane hired to help Hiss's Forgery by Typewriter argument; and even the memories of a female Bucks County, Pennsylvania, novelist who bumped into Chambers and The Ware Group during a brief residence in Washington in 1934.  Finally, since the fall of the Iron Curtain, several security agencies of former Communist dictatorships have briefly opened their files, all of them damaging to Hiss.  No wonder this second to last Podcast is the longest one.   FURTHER RESEARCH    The FOIA Documents are best summarized in Weinstein at 300-14 (“The Woodstock Cover-Up” — a coverup by the Hisses, not the FBI), 399-435 (“Rumors and Whispers:  The Pursuit of Evidence”), 625-30 (“The Motion for a New Trial”), 632-34 (“The ‘Faked' or ‘Substituted' Woodstock: Hover and the FBI”), and 641-45 (“The Double Agent:  Horace Schmahl, Mystery Man”). Other post-trials evidence is recounted in Gary Wills' “Lead Time:  A Journalist's Education” at 61-62 (Doubleday 1983); Elinor Langer, “Josephine Herbst” at 151-58, 268-76 (Northeastern Univ. Press 1984); and Donald B. Doud,” Witness to Forgery:  Memoir of a Forensic Document Examiner” at 34-66 (Orchard Knoll Publishers 2009).  The best summaries of the documents from ‘behind the Iron Curtain' are the chapter titled “Alger Hiss:Case Closed” in John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, & Alexander Vassiliev, “Spies:  The Rise & Fall of the KGB in America” at 1-31 (Yale University Press 2009); and Eduard Mark, “In Re Alger Hiss:  A Final Verdict from the Archives of the KGB,” 1 Journal of Cold War Studies at 26 (2009).   Hiss's briefs and some supporting documents in his last run at the courts (in the 1970s, claiming prosecutorial misconduct) are reproduced in Edith Tiger (Ed.), “In Re Alger Hiss” (two volumes) (Farrar Straus Giroux 1979) (Chambers' handwritten account of his homosexual activities, which he gave to the FBI, is in Volume I at 258-66.). For my skeptical reaction to some of Hiss's claims, see pages 221-28 of my paper “How Alger Hiss Was Framed: The Latest Theory,” available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3868165.   Questions:  Is there now reasonable doubt that Hiss was guilty of the offenses charged, and of a good deal more?  Or am I missing something?  Certainly, if Hiss is in fact innocent, he is one of the most wronged persons in our history!     If The Prosecution in Hiss trials did not play fair, should any tears be shed for Hiss if he was still up to his neck in spying for the Soviet Union and setting the stage for Joe McCarthy?  What motive would a female Bucks County novelist have to lie and place Chambers and Hiss together in The Ware Group in Washington in the mid-30s?  Isn't she as unlikely to be taking orders from J. Edgar Hoover as Chambers' best friend Professor Meyer Schapiro, a Jewish socialist art history professor at Columbia?  In light of the fact that all the typewriter experts Hiss's counsel hired reached the same conclusion as the FBI expert Feehan, is it likely that Hiss knew he was lying all the years he was claiming Forgery by Typewriter?  Or might he have forgotten and convinced himself that he was actually innocent?  Have you never known anyone who had such favorable delusions about his or her bad conduct long ago?   Consider all the people who have to be lying, all the experts who have to be wrong,  and all the documents that have to be forged and planted in dozens of different places in different continents over several decades if Hiss is innocent.  How likely is that?

The story of James Jesus Angleton, an obsessive reader of poetry who became the CIA’s chief of counterintelligence, and grew obsessed with the threat of Soviet moles infiltrating American institutions. Host Tim Weiner is joined by former CIA officers John Sipher and Rolf Mowatt-Larssen and former KGB officer-turned-journalist Alexander Vassiliev. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the series premiere of Whirlwind, host Tim Weiner tells the story of Samuel Dickstein, an American Congressman who turned out to be working for the enemy as an “agent of influence.” Joined by guests Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB officer turned journalist; Leon Panetta, former CIA director; Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, former CIA intelligence officer; and journalist Catherine Belton, Tim explores the possibility that there’s an “agent of influence” in the White House today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this episode of Russia Rising, we’ll visit Salisbury, England — the historic cathedral city that became the site of the first chemical nerve agent attack on European soil since the Second World War. The poisoning of former Russian double-agent Sergey Skripal in March 2018 prompted one of the most explosive and controversial allegations facing the Kremlin today: Were Russian secret intelligence agents responsible for the botched assassination? And if so, how could trained Russian spies have been so careless by leaving a trail of evidence for British investigators to follow? In the search for answers, we’ll return to the scene of the crime and speak with former KGB agent Alexander Vassiliev. Then we talk to Charles Shoebridge, a former British counter-intelligence officer and then we talk to Russian journalist Roman Dobrokhotov, who has spent the past few years investigating Russian GRU activities. We’ll speak with Dobrokhotov and his counterparts at Bellingcat, a British-based investigative news website, about how they uncovered the true identities of the alleged assassins in Salisbury, one of whom apparently used his real first name and birth date on his fake ID documents and had a vehicle registered to GRU headquarters in Moscow. The Kremlin denies any involvement in the Skripal poisoning and President Putin has said that the two Russian suspects are innocent and ordinary civilians. We’ll cut through the contradicting claims and examine the evidence, including what it reveals about Russia’s intelligence operations. Contact: Twitter: @JeffSempleGN E-mail: RussiaRising@Curiouscast.ca Guests: Alexander Vassiliev, former KGB Agent Charles Shoebridge, former British counter-intelligence officer @ShoebridgeC Roman Dobrokhotov, Editor in Chief of ‘The Insider’ @Dobrokhotov Eliot Higgins / Founder of Bellingcat @EliotHiggins

On this episode of Russia Rising, we’ll take a closer look at the man who has ruled over the world’s largest country for nearly two decades: Vladimir Putin was a poor kid from a tough neighbourhood who became a Russian KGB agent, a billionaire and the country’s longest-serving leader since Stalin. Along the way, he’s also been accused of committing a laundry list of atrocities. To truly understand what motivates Putin — why he does what he does — we need to know where he came from. To that end, we’ll speak with Arkady Ostrovsky, the Russian editor for the Economist magazine and Steven Lee Myers, a Putin Biographer and veteran journalist with the New York Times. We’ll explore Putin’s rapid rise to power in an interview with Jeremy Kinsman, Canada’s former ambassador to Russia. We'll also attempt to answer the question "what is Putin's motivation?" by speaking with a former KGB agent named Alexander Vassiliev. Vassiliev who was recruited by the KGB in the 1980s and attended the same spy training school at around the same time as Putin. If you enjoy Russia Rising, please take a minute to rate it on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts, tell us what you think and share the show with your friends. Contact: Twitter: @JeffSempleGN E-mail: RussiaRising@Curiouscast.ca Guests: Arkady Ostrovsky, Russian editor for the Economist magazine, Author of ‘The Invention of Russia’ @ArkadyOstrovsky Steven Lee Myers, New York Times Correspondent, Author of ‘The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin’ @stevenleemyers Jeremy Kinsman, Former Canadian Ambassador to the Russian Federation Alexander Vassiliev, Former KGB Agent, Co-author of ‘Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America’ 

For decades, the American Right and Left argued about the degree to which the KGB infiltrated the U.S. political and scientific establishment. The Right said “A lot”; the Left said “Much less than you think.” Both sides did a lot of finger-pointing and, sadly, slandering. Things got very ugly. At the crux of the problem, though, was a lack of reliable information about exactly what the KGB had done and how successful (or not) they had been in recruiting Americans. That changed in the mid-1990s. The United States de-classified the results of the “Venona Project,”–an intelligence initiative that involved thesurveillanceof secret Soviet cable traffic during World War Two–and Alexander Vassiliev, a Russian journalist, made his notebooks on KGB activities in the U.S. available to researchers. For the first time, scholars such as John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehrcould measure the success of KGB spying in the U.S. during the Cold War. The results are eye-opening, as Haynes and Klehr explain in Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press, 2009). Though it’s probably unwise to speak of “winners and losers” in the debate over KGB spying in the U.S., Haynes and Klehr show that the Soviets, though often bungling, had done a pretty fair job of tapping sympathetic American Leftists and stealing American secrets. That said, they also discovered that some of those the Right had accused of spying (e.g., RobertOppenheimer) were in fact innocent. This is a fascinating book and should be read by everyone interested in Cold War espionage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For decades, the American Right and Left argued about the degree to which the KGB infiltrated the U.S. political and scientific establishment. The Right said “A lot”; the Left said “Much less than you think.” Both sides did a lot of finger-pointing and, sadly, slandering. Things got very ugly. At the crux of the problem, though, was a lack of reliable information about exactly what the KGB had done and how successful (or not) they had been in recruiting Americans. That changed in the mid-1990s. The United States de-classified the results of the “Venona Project,”–an intelligence initiative that involved thesurveillanceof secret Soviet cable traffic during World War Two–and Alexander Vassiliev, a Russian journalist, made his notebooks on KGB activities in the U.S. available to researchers. For the first time, scholars such as John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehrcould measure the success of KGB spying in the U.S. during the Cold War. The results are eye-opening, as Haynes and Klehr explain in Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press, 2009). Though it’s probably unwise to speak of “winners and losers” in the debate over KGB spying in the U.S., Haynes and Klehr show that the Soviets, though often bungling, had done a pretty fair job of tapping sympathetic American Leftists and stealing American secrets. That said, they also discovered that some of those the Right had accused of spying (e.g., RobertOppenheimer) were in fact innocent. This is a fascinating book and should be read by everyone interested in Cold War espionage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For decades, the American Right and Left argued about the degree to which the KGB infiltrated the U.S. political and scientific establishment. The Right said “A lot”; the Left said “Much less than you think.” Both sides did a lot of finger-pointing and, sadly, slandering. Things got very ugly. At the crux of the problem, though, was a lack of reliable information about exactly what the KGB had done and how successful (or not) they had been in recruiting Americans. That changed in the mid-1990s. The United States de-classified the results of the “Venona Project,”–an intelligence initiative that involved thesurveillanceof secret Soviet cable traffic during World War Two–and Alexander Vassiliev, a Russian journalist, made his notebooks on KGB activities in the U.S. available to researchers. For the first time, scholars such as John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehrcould measure the success of KGB spying in the U.S. during the Cold War. The results are eye-opening, as Haynes and Klehr explain in Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press, 2009). Though it’s probably unwise to speak of “winners and losers” in the debate over KGB spying in the U.S., Haynes and Klehr show that the Soviets, though often bungling, had done a pretty fair job of tapping sympathetic American Leftists and stealing American secrets. That said, they also discovered that some of those the Right had accused of spying (e.g., RobertOppenheimer) were in fact innocent. This is a fascinating book and should be read by everyone interested in Cold War espionage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For decades, the American Right and Left argued about the degree to which the KGB infiltrated the U.S. political and scientific establishment. The Right said “A lot”; the Left said “Much less than you think.” Both sides did a lot of finger-pointing and, sadly, slandering. Things got very ugly. At the crux of the problem, though, was a lack of reliable information about exactly what the KGB had done and how successful (or not) they had been in recruiting Americans. That changed in the mid-1990s. The United States de-classified the results of the “Venona Project,”–an intelligence initiative that involved thesurveillanceof secret Soviet cable traffic during World War Two–and Alexander Vassiliev, a Russian journalist, made his notebooks on KGB activities in the U.S. available to researchers. For the first time, scholars such as John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehrcould measure the success of KGB spying in the U.S. during the Cold War. The results are eye-opening, as Haynes and Klehr explain in Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press, 2009). Though it’s probably unwise to speak of “winners and losers” in the debate over KGB spying in the U.S., Haynes and Klehr show that the Soviets, though often bungling, had done a pretty fair job of tapping sympathetic American Leftists and stealing American secrets. That said, they also discovered that some of those the Right had accused of spying (e.g., RobertOppenheimer) were in fact innocent. This is a fascinating book and should be read by everyone interested in Cold War espionage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices