Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.
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Mindy: We're here with Stephanie Marie Thornton, author of A Most Clever Girl which covers a somewhat lesser known element of the Cold War and the spy you may not have heard of who was a female - Elizabeth Bentley - whose code name was Clever Girl. So if you could just tell us a little bit about the book, how you came across Elizabeth and her story in the first place.
Stephanie: A Most Clever Girl is of course about Elizabeth Bentley. She was from Connecticut and ended up during World War Two becoming a spy for Russia. So she was spying on America. And then after World War Two ended our alliance obviously unraveled with Russia but then she turned her coat and went to the FBI and informed on this massive spy network that she had built up. She's credited with bringing down the golden age of soviet espionage in America.
So I stumbled upon her story. I actually hadn't ever heard of her and I'm a US history teacher. I teach high school history. So this is my 17th year and I found her in a google search and thought - what on earth? I've never heard of this woman? But everybody knows Joseph McCarthy. For example there's a spy who was a male Whittaker Chambers whose story parallels Elizabeth Bentley very, very closely. And whereas her story has been essentially gathering dust all of these years, Whitaker Chambers is lauded. He was actually posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work. Whereas Elizabeth, no one really knew what to do with her I think because she was a female spy. She wasn't what they expected. And then there were a lot of people who said that she was lying in her testimony. So that cast a lot of doubt on her story which in fact the FBI knew that she was telling the truth the entire time. So I needed to tell her story, because how has she fallen off the radar?
Mindy: It is doubly interesting that she would have been a turncoat. A double agent I guess and been a female. I would definitely lay the fault of her story being less well known at the foot of just good old fashioned sexism. But I do think it's interesting that she was obviously also spying for the Russians. And so that does make her story a little harder to tell, hoping to find compassion from the reader. So how did you go about covering that part of her life and keeping in mind that you need to have - unfortunately, as we all know, if your female character is unlikable, they're going to be putting the book down. So that's a pretty big challenge when she's informing on Americans. How did you go about addressing that?
Stephanie: So that's a great question because that was the biggest challenge of this book. Because how does this nice girl who's extremely well educated - Elizabeth had multiple college degrees, including her masters. How does she end up spying on America? My research started with a couple of biographies on Elizabeth. And then she actually wrote an autobiography. So I read that as well and a picture that emerged from that as well as some of her transcripts when she was testifying after she did turn her coat. So this perfect storm happened that just led her to spying.
First, she was incredibly lonely. She was called a sad sack by her classmates in college. Elizabeth was the daughter of this itinerant salesman. Her mom had passed away. I couldn't find anything about any friends until she fell in, after she spent some time in Italy getting her master's degree - because it was in 14th century Florentine poetry of all things, I'm sure that was really useful in life. So she came back and she met this woman named Lee Fewer and Lee was a member, unbeknownst to Elizabeth at first, of the American Communist Party. When Elizabeth started hanging out with Lee, she also ended up going to some of these meetings and what she discovered was that she had kind of a place where she fit in. Then she offered to do some menial tasks and organizational things and this was stuff that no one else wanted to do. This was during the Great Depression, she's been having a hard time getting a job and things. And when people say like, wow, you're really good at this. And she was like, oh! So she ended up finding a friend and then also ended up finding something that she was good at, that also eventually helps pay the bills.
The big turning point though, the big second moment was she ended up working for the Italian Library in New York. And she had this idea because in her time in Italy, this was when Mussolini was shoving castor oil down people's throats and people were being dragged out of their homes at night by the black shirts and so on. And she realized fascism is bad. So a lot of readers are going to think, you know, a communist spy, I don't know if I'm going to like this Elizabeth character. But if you really get inside her head, the opposite on the political spectrum of fascism, which I think we can all agree - people like Mussolini, Francisco Franco in Spain, Adolf Hitler, those were all fascists. Those are not good people in history.
She did not want America to go fascist and you know it was kind of a weeble wobble time of like where are we headed here? So the opposite end of the spectrum is communism. She ends up saying, hey working in the Italian Library, I have access to all these newspapers, everything. They are just lambasting the Communist Party here and I don't want Americans thinking that fascism is the way to go. And there were actually a number of Italian Americans in New York at the time who she worked with who were like, Yeah! Mussolini! Through her contacts in the Communist Party she said I can swipe some of this information and pass it along to you, so that you guys know what's being said. So you can potentially contradict some of that.
It was not a big job by any means, but she ended up doing that. So that was her very first introduction to spying and that gave her a foothold that also led her into contact with unbeknownst to her at the time, one of the biggest most important soviet spies in America at the time, his name was Jacob Golos and he ends up becoming her handler and then they fall in love. So by then she was in. So it was a combination, I think of this, this loneliness, finding a place where she fit in and then falling in love with this man who became her handler that she was all in by that point.
Mindy: Had Covid hit when you were writing this?
Stephanie: Yeah. So my deadline for turning this into my editor was May 1, 2019. I was in the revision process when the world fell apart.
Mindy: That's what I was thinking about in terms of feeling compassion when we're speaking about her classmates calling her a sad sack and her loneliness being an issue. That's something that we can all relate to right now. And I think that that provides a bit of a window.
Stephanie: Absolutely. The other thing that really struck me is that often times people will make decisions, political decisions perhaps where maybe they're on the other end of the political spectrum and you go - that is the least patriotic thing that you could possibly do. Because I'll admit when I first started reading about Elizabeth, I was like communists! She must be totally anti-American. And then no, she actually, in her autobiography wrote about what a great patriot she was. She had ancestors that she constantly lauded who signed the Declaration of Independence… or at least so she claims. She felt that what she was doing throughout the entirety of her spying career was patriotic. So I had to really look like, okay, so in this Covid world, there's a lot of mud slinging and a lot of looking across the aisle and saying you're wrong, you're anti-american. How could you possibly do these things? And then trying to hit the pause button. Ok, but where is that person coming from? Because I don't think that there are very many Americans that you could ask. Do you feel that you're a patriot? Most people would say yes, I love my country, I love being an American. How can we have polar opposite ideas of what's best for this country? Well, welcome to America. Right?
Mindy: Yeah, absolutely. It makes it very timely, doesn't it?
Stephanie: It does, yes. I wish it was almost less timely because I really feel like I could have done without a worldwide pandemic in my lifetime.
Mindy: Yeah, me too. I have not had a release yet that was written during Covid. So, weirdly enough, my release that came out right before Covid came out like the week before shutdown and then the following release, weirdly enough, had to do with a pandemic. Also irresponsible wild animal owners. Tiger King came out and the pandemic happened and everybody was like, wow, you must have written this book really, really fast. I'm like no, that book was like done and put away and edited and then Tiger King came out and we had a pandemic and that's what my book is about. But the pandemic has been an interesting place. four readers and writers. I love what you're saying about how obviously you can draw a lot of parallels between people being really like virulently patriotic in one direction or another and like Elizabeth feeling a certain way and then seeming to change sides. It's still patriotism, in its way if she felt like she was trying to save America from itself and then she was like no, I just like actually need to save America.
Stephanie: Right. Yeah, because as soon as she turns her coat it's really interesting her messaging completely shifts, she's informing on her contacts, so that's a special brand of betrayal, I guess. But when I was reading her autobiography it was very much well, now I want them to see the light because we have been totally misled by Russia. And Russia is not all it's cracked up to be. Part of the issue was that Elizabeth Bentley had a falling out with, it would have been essentially like the modern day KGB, but it's had a number of different alphabet changes, name changes over the years. So when you run afoul of them things don't tend to go well. I don't think it's a big spoiler to say that she was actually on liquidation lists, meaning they had multiple different scenarios for how they were going to execute her, which fortunately for Elizabeth didn't end up happening. She felt like the blinders had been ripped off.
Mindy: So did she attempt to change the minds of some of her cohorts?
Stephanie: The problem was that by then she had essentially been removed from her contacts so she couldn’t get with them one on one. With very few exceptions. She was meeting them essentially across the room from like the House of Un American affairs committee or the Senate quarters when she was testifying in front of a grand jury that hey, you need to put these people away because they have been spying. All of her contacts save one all pled the fifth. She was a phenomenal spy in that she kept no documentary evidence. There was nothing that could link her to any of her contacts. She had this amazing memory. She just memorized things. That was problematic when she was on the stand.
But the FBI knew when she came to them that her story was completely accurate and they knew this because there was a top secret project, it was declassified in 1995, called Project Verona. And in that project they had actually decrypted Russian cable soviet cables and they were able to, they knew, oh my gosh, based on these cables, we have American spies in the government in lots of different areas that are informing on our country to the Russians. But they lacked the know-how to say, okay, but this person is this person and this person is this person. And when Elizabeth came to them she gave them all of those keys.
So they were able to corroborate and say everything this woman is saying is true and not only that but this code name that we've known about, she just said, oh yeah this is this person and this is this person. They couldn't tell the world, they couldn't tell the Senate, They couldn't tell anyone that they had this project and that everything she was saying was true because they keep using the codes so that they could keep spying on Russia. Especially at that point we were no longer allied with them. World War two was over. So they kind of just hung her out to dry and said like, do the best you can on the stand. And by the way we need some guilty verdicts because you did spy on us. So if you want us to not go after you and give you immunity like this is the deal. So she was under a lot of pressure on the stand as well.
Mindy: And you mentioned earlier that she was questioned maybe more deeply or accused of lying and it does get tricky because obviously she was playing both sides of that fence. But then also her gender comes into it too. Were other spies treated to the same level of not being believed?
Stephanie: She would be at the top of that list. She had one spy, the only one who didn't pled the fifth, which did not go well for him. His name was William Remington and he ended up being prosecuted multiple times. He also ended up suing Elizabeth for libel. She was really held to a different standard. And part of that was, I'm going to lay the blame at Elizabeth's feet because when she first went to the FBI and first started testifying, she realized that she was going to need the press on her side. Because this is the late 40s, early 50s. And the press, I think we all recognize today is a pretty big influence, but when they broke her story, they said that she was this svelte, blonde spy queen.
She was kind of frumpy, dark haired, she looked older than she was. A middle aged woman. So when she showed up in court all of a sudden people were like wait... and she signed off on those headlines and I'm still not sure to this day exactly why she did that. Other than maybe she just thought it was going to sell more papers and make more people believe that hey, we really have Russian spies in the government.
So there was that. There was the fact that nobody knew about Project Verona. And then because she was under this intense pressure on the stand, you can see when her story, I don't want to say it unravels, but she starts to embellish. So there is actually one point where she names some names, like - I'm going to name this name but I haven't had direct contact with them. But I've heard that they were involved in spying. Fortunately for her, that little bit of testimony actually led the FBI down quite a rabbit trail that eventually ended up with them getting the Rosenbergs for leaking the atomic weaponry secrets to the Soviets. And at the time there were a lot of people who believed that the Rosenbergs were innocent. And it's through that same project - Project Verona - that the FBI knew that Julius Rosenberg was definitely guilty. That Ethel had assisted her husband in filtering atomic weapon weaponry secrets. Elizabeth's testimony at their trials also helped cinch a guilty verdict. So they were executed. Which did not make her popular with those people who believe that the Rosenbergs were not guilty, which they were.
Mindy: And she was pivotal in that, in getting that guilty verdict, right?
Stephanie: She was, yes. The FBI again steered her and said, look we know these two are guilty, we have got to get a guilty verdict. Like the Russians have the atomic bomb. Now they've detonated one, we cannot let these people continue. She had one possible contact with Julius but he was not actually a member of her spy ring. But she did go and testify. And again it was circumstantial evidence, but she was able to paint it in such a way that it really did help cinch the jury's verdict of guilty. So I would say she was pretty instrumental and then she pays for that later on because she's vilified for testifying against them.
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Mindy: Now when people talk about Elizabeth today if they talk about her at all, because I had never heard of her and I am always interested in learning about women operating outside of their gender roles at the time. And obviously Elizabeth was doing that. Do you think that her story is told less because she was, some people would call her a traitor? Or do you think it's told less simply because people don't know what to do with the story? Or because she's a woman?
Stephanie: I think it's a combination of both her being a woman and people not knowing what to do with her. And the fact that at the time she was seen as an unreliable witness, nothing could be verified. Is this woman actually telling the truth? The only people who knew she was were the FBI and they were keeping their lips buttoned.
The thing that really struck me and honestly made me see red when I was researching was the fact that she was called multiple times, both by her contacts and the press, that she was a hysterical menopausal woman and therefore she was discounted. And I thought you know what, just because a woman is not beautiful and of a certain age doesn't mean that what she has to say is unimportant. That clinched it for me. Like her story just needed to be told because it's just not fair that a man named Whittaker Chambers whose story parallels hers - so many steps are in sync. He gets a Presidential Medal of Freedom and Elizabeth gets completely forgotten because she was a woman of a certain age? That's just not okay.
Mindy: Interesting that the newspapers tried to paint her as like this young blond bombshell.
Stephanie: I really wish that I could go back in time and say no Elizabeth, don't let them do that because it's not going to work out for you. It might sell papers, but you know, as soon as she showed up in the courtroom, people said, wait, how can we trust this woman when she doesn't even look like how she said?
Mindy: But it does, you know, go really far to say that sex has always been what sells.
Stephanie: Totally. And I think that that was what she was banking on initially. Although when afterwards writes her autobiography, it's a very different portrait that she's trying to paint. It's not quite like 1950s housewife because she was never married and didn’t have Children, but like very much the matronly, responsible, patriotic, deep family connections going back to you know, early patriots, night and day portrayal compared to those early headlines that she signed off on.
Mindy: I'm curious, has anybody ever applied any type of psychological profile to her? Because I think it would be interesting with the talk of her being kind of an outsider and like a social outcast when she was younger, never being married, never having Children when that of course was supposed to be her role. I'm just curious if anybody has ever approached that from a psychological narrative, like still looking for her place, still trying to figure out how she fits in and where she fits in and trying so hard that she's literally changing teams right?
Stephanie: Not anything specific that I came across when I was researching. I did try to in my version of her, play with that a little bit. So that struggling young woman during the Great Depression, hasn't yet met Lee. I had her keeping like a little journal of behaviors, body language because it just seemed to me that a woman who had made it all the way through to her mid twenties and had no close friends had never really had any major romances. Well how do you get to that point? And when you have No close friends and you've made it through 25 years of your life and people are calling you a sad sack, how does that feel? So if you felt completely disconnected from people and like I don't even know how to interact with them. That was kind of the slant that I took for her.
Mindy: I mean to me everything about that makes perfect sense as far as this need for belonging and like friendship you talked about. She ends up in a romantic situation with her handler. I mean for me that's almost even more interesting because I would assume it's probably her first romantic relationship and that would have a huge impact on her and then ends up her handler in building the soviet spy network.
Stephanie: She fell hard for, his name is Jacob Golos. And she had had one romantic relationship during her years in Italy, but it was extremely short lived. But Jacob Golos was pretty big, he was the man behind the curtain when it came to the Russian spy network here in America. For those people who have seen The Americans, The Resident here in the U. S. So super highly placed, but no one knew who this guy was, what he looked like, what his name was, just he's The Resident and she fell in with him. That was really pivotal for her. And then he ends up grooming her essentially to not take his place but to take over his spy network because of course you can only operate for so long before eventually you start to garner attention. And so he needed to pass the mantle to someone. And Elizabeth was incredibly intelligent and I felt like it made sense if she had really been an astute student of human body language and behavior and things like that in pre-spy years, it seems like that would really have helped with her interactions with her contacts during her spying. So everything just kind of fell together.
Mindy: Was it difficult for you Then in reading her autobiography because I assume that would be a huge Touchstone for you in your research, but at the same time an autobiography of course is going to have its pitfalls in itself because it's the person writing about themselves. So obviously they're going to cast themselves in the most positive light. So what was that process like for you when you know that you want to make this person as sympathetic as possible for the reader, But you're also you know, you're aware that this particular resource is not necessarily unbiased, Right?
Stephanie: And hers is 100% not unbiased. I had read her biographies before I read her autobiography and by that point, once I picked up - it's called Out of Bondage, the one that she wrote. So by the time I picked that one up, the manuscript, its first draft was done. I had the events set. I just needed more nuts and bolts of getting inside her head. Why did you do these things? There were a number of instances where I could see like, okay, she's definitely trying to cast herself in the best possible light. But for example, when it came to answering, why did you become a soviet spy in America? The patriotism piece really, even if she was spinning it a little bit, it really did seem like, okay, she got into this with America's best interests at heart. As opposed to, you know, some of the biographies or secondary research where it was just - she became a communist spy after she completed her master's degree.
That was definitely helpful, but I did definitely take things with a couple grains of salt because I could tell this was written, you know, after she had been vilified in the newspapers and things like that, that she was trying to cast herself in the best possible light. So that's also part of the reason why there's a second narrator in the book. So Katherine Gray is there to question Elizabeth and say wait, wait, wait, you said this, but this is actually what happened - because I read the transcript. Or no, that's not what it looks like from the pictures that I saw. So to make sure that we keep Elizabeth on the straight and narrow.
Mindy: That would be very difficult for you as the author. Instinctively you want to be on this woman's side. You have to be sure that you are also using all of the information that you have in front of you.
Stephanie: Absolutely. To portray Elizabeth Bentley as two dimensional patriotic. Like that just wasn't an option because her rationale for joining the Communist Party for spying on her own country is so complex. It was actually challenging of course, but also pretty fun to try to write her because I would definitely say that she is my most complex narrator that I've ever had to write.
Mindy: I think that would be quite the challenge. Were you worried about the challenge of creating this character and getting readers to feel compassion for her number one, but also worried about whether or not you were getting it like quote unquote, right?
Stephanie: So, yes, the compassion piece was the biggest challenge. However, this felt like slightly less of a challenge than my prior book because my book that actually came out the week the world fell apart with Covid was And They Called It Camelot, which is biographical fiction about Jackie Kennedy and that one I felt like every nuance had to be exactly right and perfect. The amount of research that went into that one, not that A Most Clever Girl didn't involve a lot of research - because it did. But I felt like I almost had a little bit more creative license with the Elizabeth Bentley story, She's no longer living, unfortunately. So there are fewer sources that I could go back to because she passed away in the early 60s. It was almost a little bit refreshing to have somebody's story who was open to more interpretation, even just based on her own writings.
Mindy: Everybody knows for the most part every detail of Jackie O’s life. So you were able to have a little more, not necessarily fun, but certainly probably write with a little more confidence that not every single statement you make will be turned over, picked up and examined.
Stephanie: Exactly. I felt like when I was writing And They Called It Camelot, you know, hey, we've got this dinner party at the White house. I can't just say they ate. I have to go and find the menu because we have the menus and if I don't find the menu, someone's going to call me out on that. Or exactly which wine was served. Whereas Elizabeth Bentley, I was like, I think she's going to like hot dogs and meat loaf and that's just fine.
Mindy: That's wonderful. I love it. So A Most Clever Girl is available now. And why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online?
Stephanie: Absolutely. I would love to connect with readers. My website is Stephanie thornton author dot com. I'm also on Facebook so you can find me there, I’ve got my author page and I'm also on Instagram as well. So there's lots of pictures of cats in Alaska and baking and books.
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