To call these people apologists for Stalin...

"Lillian Hellman, Dalton Trumbo, Richard Wright, Malcolm Crowley"

is misleading and unfair. They were more concerned with fascists and their motivations may not always have been as pure as yours. If we called you an apologist for Bush because you voted for him once (or twice), you'd howl. You, like them, given the politics of the time, hung on longer then some, John Dewey, for instance. They believed what Stalin said, that the west was trying to assasinate him and end the revolution. Not difficult to believe at the time. Many people did, not all, but many did, until it was conclusively refuted after the release of Nikita Khrushchev’s speech to the Twentieth Congress of the Russian Communist Party:

The commission has become acquainted with a large quantity of materials in the NKVD archives and with other documents and has established many facts pertaining to the fabrication of cases against Communists, to glaring abuses of Socialist legality which resulted in the death of innocent people. It became apparent that many party, Government and economic activists who were branded in 1937-38 as ‘enemies,’ were actually never enemies, spies, wreckers, etc., but were always honest Communists.

They were only so stigmatized and often, no longer able to bear barbaric tortures, they charged themselves (at the order of the investigative judges – falsifiers) with all kinds of grave and unlikely crimes.

Of course, here in America, there are no honest and loyal patriotic American communists. They only existed in the Soviet Union where their political enemies made up lies about them and arranged show trials for them so they could be imprisoned or executed. But this is America. That could never happen here.

Sometimes I wish I wasn't brain addled. I would be able to write and express myself better, like you just did. It was an "axedent," literally. I have faith in Mona. She's far too smart, but just a bit too stubborn. I just don't trust these people. They are very bad people. They are the mirror image of the Stalinists Mona and the rest of us hate, so when I see them claiming A, I'm inclined to believe B. When my kid was training Feds in urban combat MOUT during his years as a Ranger in the 90s, he heard quite a few stories because he had planned to go into FLE after the army, and the FBI specifically. I heard all this stuff he heard. That pretty much clinched it for me. I had come across this stuff in college, heard stories from ex-federal prosecutors I happened to come in contact with, and a few friends that practice crim defense in federal cases. I have even seen an agent blatantly perjure herself in court. The FBI, for the most part (not all units and depts.), is a political mess. I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw Alger Hiss' alleged Underwood typewriter.

I have never voted for a Republican in my life. Nixon beat McCloskey, or that might have spoiled my record.

When you get started on this subject you betray a great deal of ignorance of historians, and the state of the evidence. I'm skeptical as to why Weinstein won't release some of his notes, but non-rightwingers have also found his work extremely persuasive.

You are not skeptical about why the RNC and the WH won't release all the e-mails, are you? Like it or not, and I won't debate this with you further because I'm afraid it's you who is woefully ignorant on this matter still, there is no Holy Grail of American Soviet espionage, like the Cambridge Five in Britain.

Speaking of beraying a great ignorance...

And the fact that Klehr and Haynes write at a venue affiliated with George Mason University is a truly stupid reason to attempt to discredit them. George mason is a respectable institution.

It's FedSoc Central, for Christ's sake! I bet it was Scaife endowed from the ground up! Jeebus, you can be so dense!

George Mason University is a Virginia-based University, situated close to Washington, D.C. It is notable for hosting over 40 right-wing research centers and affiliates including the Institute for Humane Studies and the Mercatus Center...

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George_Mason_University

I'd rather get a degree from GMU than Liberty Univ. But only if they were the only two choices. I'd rather go to William and Mary.

It looks like Koch money. Samey-same.

Here's some. Highly respected? You must be high, Mona.

http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientprofileprinterfriendly.php?recipientID=413

http://www.mediatransparency.org/allinonesearchresults.php

There's Scaife. He did get the ball rollling back during the founding. And William Kristol and Walter E. Williams .

Please, Mona. Come to your senses.

Who argued that "many" blacks fought for the south. Respected and respectable history. Poor Mona.

http://www.civilwarhome.com/blacks.htm

Really, you just do not know what you are talking about. Even very liberal Bruce Craig who wrote the Harry Dexter White bio, concluded with all sorts of special pleading about White's allegedly pure motives, that White committed espionage for Stalin.

Mona's argument WRT White seems awfully damning. Remember, during this time, Stalin was our ally. White died in 1948, three days after denying the charges at HUAC. The name of Craig's book? Treasonable Doubt.

http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/cratre.html

Anyone associated with David Horowitz has no credibility in my view. Period. That would be Haynes and Klehr.

Anyone who sounds like Bart De Palma... well, right now that would be you, Mona. And I've said all I've needed to say. I will add this one caveat. Espionage when conducted by an ally is still no joke, but this is all ancient history. The espionage and influence in the highest levels of our government going on right now by another ally, Israel, should get such attention, don't you agree? Why isn't it?