Todays’s guest on the blog is Stephanie Marie Thornton, author of A Most Clever Girl, which takes readers on a thrill ride inside the calculating mind of a notorious Cold War spy: Elizabeth Bentley, code name Clever Girl.
Elizabeth Bentley is notorious for her role in the Red Scare, as well as for naming the Rosenbergs - which led to their execution. Was it difficult to write about this character in a way that could build empathy within the reader?
Yes! Elizabeth Bentley is an intriguing protagonist because she made a lot of terrible choices in her life, but I got the feeling that some of those early decisions—like becoming a Communist and then joining the CPUSA underground to spy—were made because she really did want to do something meaningful during a very difficult time in American history. At first, that meant spying on America to root out fascists and later, she aimed to expose Communist spies in American government.
While many Americans at the time believed—and protested in the streets—that the Rosenbergs were not guilty, the top secret VENONA Project confirmed and gave indisputable evidence that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were involved in the Soviet spy ring that sent atomic secrets to Moscow. The FBI and J. Edgar Hoover had also used VENONA to confirm the identities of spies that Elizabeth Bentley informed on even before the Rosenberg trial. They couldn’t oust the project, but they could—and did—get Bentley to provide circumstantial evidence at the Rosenberg trial to ensure a guilty verdict. Unfortunately for Bentley, VENONA wasn’t declassified until 1995, so she died with many Americans believing she was a full-blown liar. To me, this ultimately made her overall story sympathetic even if there were moments where it was difficult to empathize with her choices.
Bentley's reputation is somewhat tarnished, and much of her testimony at the time was called into question, whereas her male counterparts were often awarded for their service. Can all of this be laid at the feet of sexism, or is there reason to doubt some of her motivations?
I don’t think all of Elizabeth’s tarnished reputation can be blamed on sexism, but a fair chunk can. Whereas men like Joseph McCarthy and Whittaker Chambers were taken seriously when they made accusations of Communist spies hiding in American government, when Elizabeth Bentley named similar names—which the FBI had secretly corroborated with Project VENONA—she was pilloried in the press. Part of that came from Bentley’s appearance—she had encouraged early newspaper bylines claiming that a blond spy queen had exposed a Red spy ring, but when she showed up to testify, everyone discovered she was actually a brunette of a certain age. Later, she’d be called hysterical and menopausal, descriptions that never would have leveled at either Chambers or McCarthy.
Elizabeth Bentley was no saint—she initially told the truth during her testimony to the FBI and Senate, but as time went on and there were no guilty verdicts for the spies she named, she felt pressured to give up even more names. This is when she started relying on hearsay, which in fact, helped lead to the convictions of the Rosenbergs, who were in fact guilty. So, while sexism was a large contributing factor, Elizabeth also hammered a few nails into her own coffin.
What was it like researching such a divisive time in American history? Did you find any unexpected walls while researching?
I was actually incredibly lucky that Project VENONA had already been declassified—without that backing, this story could have been written much differently as it would have been nearly impossible to ascertain the extent to which Elizabeth Bentley was telling the truth during her many testimonies. The same goes for the Rosenbergs—there are still people who maintain they were not guilty, although we now have declassified information to prove their guilt.
The most difficult walls I discovered came up when I was researching Russian spy agencies during World War II and the Cold War. While the FBI and CIA have published a lot of material on their spies and agencies and techniques, the KGB and its predecessors don’t seem too keen on sharing that information, (go figure!), which meant I sometimes had to extrapolate.
Given the current environment, did you find parallels between the Cold War, and modern day?
Absolutely! (As they say, history does tend to repeat itself.) First, I was struck by the fact that regardless of the era, most Americans truly want what is best for their country. Second, many of those same Americans have polar-opposite visions of what is best the country and how to go about achieving it, which often results in division. For example, Elizabeth Bentley believed fascism was a threat to America, so she joined the Communist Party of the United States. Many other Americans at the time—and today—would have seen that as the least patriotic move she could have made.
The other parallel that stood out was about spying itself. While researching Soviet Cold War assassination techniques, (Elizabeth Bentley may have crossed the wrong people at one point), I came across KGB cyanide-spraying guns and other poisoning techniques reminiscent of the 21st century poisonings of Alexander Litvinenko and Alexei Navalny, not to mention North Korea’s poisoning of Kim Jong-nam. No matter the decade, it’s always dangerous to cross the wrong people!
