KGB Cold War espionage throughout the West has turned out to
be far more extensive, damaging and morally compromising than
even the most feverishly committed McCarthyite could have
imagined at the time. But with the Cold War over, what does it
really matter? Quite a lot, it turns out. Recent revelations from
KGB archives and declassified FBI files have rekindled long-
smouldering debates over the morality of the Cold War and so-
called McCarthyism.
Nor did the leaks end in the 1940s. As late as 1970, according to
Christopher Andrew's book, The Mitrokhin Archive, 70% of
Warsaw Pact weaponry was based on Western technology.
But what about the greatest threat of the Cold War, the fear that a
Communist fifth column operated at the highest levels of
government, subverting democracy from within? Documents from
previously secret KGB and FBI files largely confirm our worst
fears. We now have overwhelming evidence that senior American
diplomat Alger Hiss provided classified secrets to his Soviet
handlers throughout the 1930s and 1940s. We also know that
Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury,
whispered details of U.S. negotiating strategies to his Soviet
handlers. White informed the KGB in 1945, for instance, that the
U.S. would agree to the Soviet seizure of the Baltic states --
public protest notwithstanding. He also assisted Soviet efforts to
gain veto power at the United Nations' founding conference that
same year.