A CALCULATED RESTRAINT: WHAT ALLIED LEADERS SAID ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST by Richard Breitman

(Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin at Yalta 2/1945)

The most frequent question concerning the Holocaust centers on what allied leaders knew about the genocide against the Jews and what they spoke about it in public and private. In previous monographs, FDR AND THE JEWS and OFFICIAL SECRETS: WHAT THE NAZIS PLANNED AND WHAT THE BRITISH AND AMERICAN KNEW Holocaust historian Richard Breitman addresses when these men knew what was occurring in the death camps. In his latest work, A CALCULATED RESTRAINT: WHAT ALLIED LEADERS SAID ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST Breitman shifts his focus as it took until December 1942 for allied leaders to issue a joint statement concerning Nazi Germany’s policy of eradicating Jews from Europe. It would take President Franklin D. Roosevelt until March 1944 to publicly comment on what was occurring in the extermination camps. In his new book, Breitman asks why these leaders did not speak up earlier. Further he explores the character of each leader and concludes that the Holocaust must be understood in light of the political and military conditions exhibited during the war that drove their decision-making and commentary.

Breitman begins his account by introducing Miles Taylor, a Steel magnate turned diplomat representing Franklin Roosevelt in a September 22, 1942, meeting with the Pope. Taylor described the Nazi genocide against the Jews and plans to exterminate millions. He pressured the Pontiff to employ his moral responsibility and authority against Hitler and his minions. In the weeks that followed Taylor conveyed further evidence of Nazi plans to the White House.

(Anthony Eden, British Foreign Secretary) in 1942

The Papacy’s response was much less than could be hoped for. Monsignor Dell’Acqua warned the Pope that any negative commentary concerning Nazi actions could be quite detrimental to the church, ultimately producing a Papal reaction that it was impossible to confirm Nazi actions, and the Vatican had no “practical suggestions to make,” apparently believing that only military action, not moral condemnation could end Nazi atrocities. It would take until 2020 for the Vatican to open records of Pius XII’s tenure to outside researchers.

Breitman states his goal in preparing his monograph was to discern what “Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin knew about the Holocaust to what they said about it in their most important statements on the subject.” The author’s approach rests on two key avenues of research and analysis. First, the extent to which allied leaders sought to create and mobilize the international community based on a common morality. Second, how allied leaders understood the relationship between the Holocaust and the war itself during different stages of the conflict. Breitman’s account relies on thorough research based on years of archival work, in addition to correspondence among allied leaders, numerous biographies and secondary works on the subject.

Despite the release of most allied documents pertaining to the war, except for Russia which has become more forthcoming since the fall of the Soviet Union there is a paucity of material relating to allied leaders. Further, there is little, if any record of allied leaders themselves addressing the Holocaust in any of their private conversations, though Stalin’s public commentary does allude to Nazi atrocities more so than Roosevelt and Churchill.

It is clear from Breitman’s account that with Hitler’s January 30, 1939, speech to the Reichstag that the Fuhrer was bent on the total annihilation of the Jews, not just pressuring them to leave Germany and immigrate elsewhere. It is also clear that Churchill and Roosevelt were fully aware of the threat Hitler posed to the international order, but were limited in their public reaction to the sensitive issue that a war against Germany to save Jews was not politically acceptable, particularly as it related to communism at a time when anti-Semitism was pervasive worldwide. Fearing Nazi propaganda responses, allied leaders generalized the threat of Nazi atrocities, thereby subsuming Nazi policies to exterminate Jews among a broader range of barbaric behaviors, thereby limiting explicit attacks on the growing Holocaust.

Breckinridge Long (1881–1958). Long was an Assistant Secretary in the US State Department during World War II, from 1940-1944.

(Breckinridge Long, anti-Semitic State Department official did his best to block Jewish immigration to the United States during the Holocaust)

The author is correct in arguing that had allied leaders spoken out and confronted Nazi behavior earlier it might have galvanized more Jews to flee and go into hiding and perhaps encourage gentiles to take serious steps to assist Jews. No matter what the result it would have confirmed the rumors and stories concerning Nazi “resettlement in the east,” and possibly encouraged neutral governments to speak out and do more.

Breitman’s overall thesis is correct pertaining to why allied leaders did not speak out publicly about the Holocaust, though they did comment on the barbarity of the Nazis. The reasons have been presented by many historians that Roosevelt was very concerned about providing the Nazis a propaganda tool because any comments would be used to reinforce the view that the Roosevelt administration was controlled by Jews and it would anger anti-Semites, particularly those in his own State Department, and isolationists in Congress. FDR reasoned the best way to approach the Holocaust was not to single out Jews and concentrate on the larger issue of winning the war. The faster victory could be achieved, the more Jews that could be saved. This opinion was similar to Winston Churchill’s beliefs.

The author spends the first third of the book focusing on the “Big Three,” and their early views as to what policies the Nazis were implementing in Eastern Europe. Breitman will focus on four examples of public commentary which he analyzes in detail. On August 24, 1941, Winston Churchill made a speech denouncing Nazi executions in the east. He singled out what the Germans were doing to the Russians on Soviet soil, with no mention of the Jews as victims. However, his last sentence read; “we are in the presence of a crime without a name.” Was Churchill referring to the Holocaust? Was he trying to satisfy Stalin? It is difficult to discern, but British intelligence released in the 1990s and early 2000s provide an important picture of what the SS and police units were doing behind battle lines in the Soviet Union in July and August 1941 – mass executions of Jews, Bolsheviks, and other civilian targets. Churchill’s rationale for maintaining public silence regarding the Holocaust was his fear that the Luftwaffe’s Enigma codes that had been broken by cartographers at Bletchley Park would be compromised should he make statements based on British intelligence. It is interesting according to Breitman that after August 1941, Churchill no longer favored receiving “execution numbers” from MI6, fearing that the information could become public. Churchill’s overriding goal was to strengthen ties with the US and USSR and would worry about moral questions later.

In Stalin’s case he made a speech on November 6, 1941, the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 at the Mayakovsky Metro Station. According to Alexander Werth, a British journalist who was present it was “a strange mixture of black gloom and complete confidence.” Aware of Nazi mass murder of Jews, Stalin mentioned the subject directly only once, saying the Germans were carrying out medieval pogroms just as eagerly as the Tsarist regime had done. In a follow up speech the next day, Stalin said nothing about the killing of Jews. Stalin generalized the threat of extermination so all Soviet people would feel the threat facing their country, but at least he mentioned it signaling that subject could now be openly discussed, but Stalin’s overriding concern was to focus on the Nazi threat to the state and people of the USSR and believed that references to the Nazi war against the Jews could only distract from that. After his November remarks he made no further public comments about the killing of Jews for the rest of the war.

(Jan Karski (born Jan Kozielewski, 24 June 1914^[a] – 13 July 2000) was a Polish soldier, resistance-fighter, and diplomat during World War II. He is known for having acted as a courier in 1940–1943 to the Polish government-in-exile and to Poland’s Western Allies about the situation in German-occupied Poland. He reported about the state of Poland, its many competing resistance factions, and also about Germany’s destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and its operation of extermination camps on Polish soil that were murdering Jews, Poles, and others)

FDR’s approach was to prepare for war and his comments were designed to do so and not say anything that could rile up anti-New Dealers who opposed war preparation. At press conferences on July 31 and February 1, 1941, FDR did not raise the subject of Hitler’s threat to annihilate the Jews of Europe and was not questioned about it. Roosevelt feared any publicity surrounding saving Jews would create greater opposition to aiding the democracies of Europe to fight the Nazis. It took Roosevelt until August 21, 1942, for the president to denounce barbaric crimes against innocent civilians in Europe and Asia and threatened those responsible with trials after the war. He would reaffirm these comments in a statement on October 7, 1942, but in both instances he was unwilling to denounce the Nazi war against the Jews. However, if we fast forward to FDR’s March 24, 1944, press conference, shortly after the Nazis occupied Hungary, the president called attention to Hungarian Jews as part of the Nazi campaign to destroy the Jews of Europe, accusing the Nazis of the “wholesale systematic murder of the Jews in Europe.” Articles written by the White House press corps and government broadcasts were disseminated to a large audience in the United States and abroad.

Nazi camps in occupied Poland, 1939-1945 [LCID: pol72110]

Breitman dissects a fourth speech given on January 30, 1939, where Adolf Hitler lays out his plans in front of the Reichstag. The speech recounted the usual Nazi accusations against the west, praise for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, virulent comments and threat against the Jews, and fear of the Bolshevik menace. He was careful not to attack Roosevelt as he wanted to limit American aid. According to Chief AP correspondent Louis Lochner who was present at the speech Hitler reserved his most poisonous verbiage for the Jews as he would welcome the complete annihilation of European Jewry.

The title of the book, A CALCULATED RESTRAINT is somewhat misleading as Breitman focuses a great deal on events and personalities that may tendentiously conform to the title, but do not zero in exactly on that subject matter. The author details the negotiations leading up to the Nazi-Soviet Pact and its implications for Poland and Eastern Europe in General. Further, he comments on the American and British about faces in dealing with communism. Breitman focuses on the “Palestine question” and its role in Nazi strategy and how the British sought to protect its Arab “possessions,” – oil! Operation Torch, as a substitute for a second in Europe is discussed; the battle of El Alamein and the role of General Erwin Rommel. Other prominent individuals are covered including Reinhard Heydrich who chaired the Wannsee Conference outlining the Holocaust and the Lidice massacre after he was assassinated. Breitman does deal with the Holocaust, not commentary by the “Big Three” as he introduces Gerhart M. Riegner, a representative of the World Jewish Congress and Polish diplomat Jan Karski, who met with Roosevelt, and Peter Bergson who did his best to publicize the Holocaust and convince the leaders to focus more on containing it through his Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe. Another important American official that Breitman spends a great deal of time on is Oscar Cox, general counsel of the Foreign Economic Administration, which included the Lend-Lease Administration who tried to enlist others in the battle against anti-Semites, like Breckinridge Long inside the State Department. Both men played an integral role in making the Holocaust public and trying to convince Churchill and Roosevelt to be more forthcoming about educating the public about the annihilation of the Jews. This would lead to the Bermuda Conference and the War Refugee Board in the United States, neither of which greatly impacted the plight of the Jews. Breitman also includes a well thought out and incisive analysis of the murder of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz toward the end of the war.

SS chief Heinrich Himmler (right) during a visit to the Auschwitz camp. [LCID: 50742]

(SS chief Heinrich Himmler (right) during a visit to the Auschwitz camp. Poland, July 18, 1942)

Perhaps, Breitman’s best chapter is entitled, “The Allied Declaration” in which he points out that by the second half of 1942 there was enough credible information that reached allied governments and media that affirmed the genocide of the Jews. However, as Breitman argues, the atmosphere surrounding this period and the risks of going public were too much for allied leaders.

It is clear the book overly focuses on the course of the war, rather than on its stated title. The non-Holocaust material has mostly been mined by other historians, and in many cases Breitman reviews material he has presented in his previous books. Much of the sourcing is based on secondary materials, but a wide variety of documentary evidence is consulted. In a sense if one follows the end notes it provides an excellent bibliography, but the stated purpose of the book does not receive the coverage that is warranted.

In summary, Breitman’s book is a concise and incisive look at his subject and sheds some new light on the topic. We must accept the conclusion that the allied leader’s responses and why they chose what to say about the Holocaust must be understood in light of the political and military demands that existed in the war and drove their decision making. I agree with historian Richard Overy that Breitman spends much more time discussing what was known about the murder of Jews, how it was communicated and its effect on lower-level officials and ministers, rather than discussing the response of the Allied big three, which again reveals a generally ambivalent, even skeptical response to the claims of people who presented evidence as to what was occurring.

(Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill at the Tehran Conference, November, 1943)

THE YEAR OF THE LOCUST by Terry Hayes

May 25, 2025szfreiberger Espionage Leave a comment

Natural gas production and processing in Russia

(Russian industrial complex in Siberia)

Ten years ago, I was fortunate to come across Terry Hayes’ first novel I AM PILGRIM. The novel was riddled with suspense with constant shifting plot lines, well developed characters, exceptional background information and exquisite detail developed with tremendous depth. It was a spy thriller that was almost addictive as Hayes led you from one scene to another keeping you on the edge of your seat. Once I completed the novel I soon learned there would be a follow up effort in a year or two. Much to my chagrin it took almost a decade for Hayes to complete his next novel, THE YEAR OF THE LOCUST. Hayes is a movie producer with a flair for constructing prose for thrilling spy novels. He is an expert in developing cliff hangers that seem to repeat after each of his short chapters. His latest effort replicates the strengths of his first novel, and I must say it was worth the wait, though I would request if there were a third novel on the horizon we did not have to wait another ten years for it to appear.

The star and narrator of THE YEAR OF THE LOCUST is a CIA operative with nom de guerre of Kane, though his real name is Ridley Walker. Hayes immediately draws the reader into his web of suspense as he describes the public execution of ten people, a few of which were CIA operatives embedded in Iran who were victims of a public hanging. It appears a US agent turned out to be a Russian spy who outed these individuals to the Tehran regime.

After searching for the double agent identified as Magus and failing to locate him, CIA Director, Richard Rourke, code named Falcon turned the mission to locate Magus to Kane. Kane had a special skill set, the most important being a specialist in entering what are called “Denied Access Areas” places under hostile control such as Russia, Syria, North Korea, Iran, and the tribal zones of Pakistan. Magus was an expert in disappearing and hiding, but so was Kane, and his target was kind enough to teach him a new technique which would eventually save his life.

This may contain: there is a map of the world with countries

Hayes’ approach is to keep the action moving as it seems as if Kane goes from one treacherous situation to the next, not allowing the reader to catch his breath. Kane’s next secret mission is to rendezvous with an informer within one of the world’s most dangerous groups, the Army of the Pure a fundamentalist, anti-western, and violent organization – another reincarnation of ISIS. The meeting was to take place in the Denied Access Area – where the borders of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan meet with the informer who had information concerning a major event that would emulate its darkest predecessors. The informer was a courier, who was also an air conditioning repair man and technician.

The courier provided a photo of Abu Muslim al-Tundra, a military commander of the Army of the Pure who was supposedly killed by an American bomb. He had been head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a founder of ISIS, and on his back was a tattoo of a locust. Hayes’ excels at developing the background for each character and their role in the plot, with al-Tundra is being no exception as the author explains his road to being a master terrorist. In addition, Hayes is very attuned to integrating historical events into his story. Historical references are accurate and important. For example, American distrust for the Pakistani intelligence service and overall direction of the government in Islamabad. Other references include; how Pol Pot might have never become a genocidal killer, Union Carbide’s Bhopal disaster, oil discoveries in Baku, Azerbaijan, and many others.

Hayes is a master at describing the technology behind Kane’s spy craft. Weapons and equipment are laid out for the reader including their development and use. The CIA’s attempt to kill al-Tundra with hell fire missiles fired from across the Iranian border into Iran and deceive its Russian air-defense system is a case in point. Further, his knowledge of submarines, stealth warfare, and weaponry is impressive, and reflects a tremendous amount of research that went into authoring the novel.

As in his first book, Hayes develops a series of interesting characters. First, and most important is Ridley Kane, but others play an important role including Dr. Rebecca McMaster, an ER doctor who lives with Kane. Laleh, an Afghan woman who Kane saved from execution, who later would reciprocate by doing the same for him. Richard Roarke, CIA head, an old school operator. Lucas Corrigan, CIA Head of Human Resources who was “the man with eyes as green and cold as river rocks,” a Ph. D and Psy.D whose father was CIA Station Chief in Saigon during the 1975 evacuation. Madeline O’Neill, a CIA analyst who tracks terrorists and is an expert at creating back stories for Kane’s missions. Clayton Powell, the CIA Archivist. Bill “Buster” Glover, a CIA Assistant Director. Baxter Woodward, a physicist who met Kane on “a submarine that didn’t exist, a craft that had been designed to disappear, was ready to set sail for waters unknown.” Yosef Faheez, the third richest man in Pakistan and bankroller of terrorist operations. Clifford Montgomery, President of the United States. Ghorbani and Bahman, two Blackwater operatives embedded in Iran. Aslan Kadyrov, known as “the Rifle,” is in charge of Russia’s large earth mining complex in Siberia called the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Lastly, Roman Kazinsky, the real name of al-Tundra who turned out to be Russian and former Spetsnaz in addition to being a devout Muslim.

(Terry Hayes, author)

As the reader you must pay careful attention to Hayes’ construction of the novel. He switches from scene to scene and mission to mission very artfully, but quickly. He creates a number of scenarios for Kane to confront and resolve. From searching for a traitor who divulged the agents embedded in Iran resulting in their execution, the search for the world’s most dangerous terrorist, being aboard the USS Leviathan, a stealth submarine which experiences disaster below the Indian Ocean. Lastly about two-thirds into the novel Hayes surprisingly pivots morphing his story into a Covid like apocalyptic salvation story which results from Kazinsky’s plan to use Russia’s mining operation in Kazakhstan at the Baikonur plant to spread siber spores that would transform the world as an instrument for his vengeance.

Aspects of the novel may seem a bit far-fetched, but Haye’s credibility as an amazing storyteller allows the reader to carry on. A number of Hayes’ characters are sarcastic, and this allows the author to inject a good amount of humor into dark situations that keep the reader entertained. The book has all of Hayes’ amusing elements: astuteness, clear-cut and intelligent writing; believable characters even if their missions are hard to digest; a complicated plot; lessons in history, geography, cultures and politics; and an incisive look, professionally and personally, into the mind of a spy. Further, in THE YEAR OF THE LOCUST things occur that pull the storyline together. It’s one thing to buy into the great research and detail behind creating a spy’s so-called “legend,” his claimed background supported by documents and memorized details. It’s another to come upon individuals in the most unlikely places as a convenient way to integrate disparate elements of the story. In closing I would request that the author does not wait another ten years to publish his next spy thriller.

(Russian industrial complex in Siberia)

BEING JEWISH AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF GAZA by Peter Beinart

May 17, 2025szfreiberger Middle Eastern History Leave a comment

Map showing the aid entry points and the military zone bifurcating north and south Gaza.

A few months ago, I had a conversation with an old friend from my Yeshiva days in Brooklyn. At Yeshiva and in high school we were very close, and it is the case with many people we drifted apart over the years but intermittently we kept in touch. Holiday greetings, a periodic email, or phone call were our communication over the decades, and I still have fond memories of our relationship. It was during that conversation and his reaction to a number of my book reviews which I posted on my web site that I realized that a wall might be developing between us. The foundation of our disagreement involved our reactions to events in Gaza that followed Hamas’ brutal attack of October 7, 2023, when over 1200 Israelis were slaughtered and 250 hostages were seized by the Palestinian terrorist group. In our last conversation we “agreed to disagree” as he said so we could continue our friendly catch up conversation. The crux of our disagreement rested on Israel’s reaction to the October 7^th massacre which led to the destruction in Gaza making large parts of the territory almost inhabitable.

(Evgenia Simanovich runs to the reinforced concrete shelter of her family’s home, moments after rocket sirens sounded in Ashkelon, Israel, on October 7. “In Ashkelon, residents have just seconds to seek shelter before a rocket launched from Gaza could strike,” photographer Tamir Kalifa told CNN. “Evgenia yelled for me to follow her, and I pressed my camera’s shutter as we sprinted to her home a few meters away.” )

I went to the Gaza Strip in the spring of 1984 when I had a Fulbright Fellowship at Hebrew University. It was a time of war after Israel invaded Lebanon to root out Palestinian terrorists who were making life miserable for Israelis living near their northern border. When I visited Gaza I witnessed many of the living conditions that made refugee camps that were run down and squalid. At the same time, I was amazed at the beauty of the Mediterranean coast that bordered the Palestinian enclave. As a Ph. D in history who focused and published on Arab Israeli relations I am keenly aware of the positions of both sides, Arab and Jew when it came to the riots of the 1930s, the Holocaust, and events surrounding the 1948 War that led to the bifurcation of the region between differing viewpoints. I have always held the belief that peace between the two sides was almost impossible based on ideology, the emotional attachment to the land by all parties, the leadership in the region, and the role of major powers.

Palestinians walk past the rubble of buildings destroyed during the Israeli offensive in Rafah

(Palestinians walk past the rubble of buildings destroyed during the Israeli offensive, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip).

With my mindset I was fortunate to come across Peter Beinart’s latest work; BEING JEWISH AFTER THE DESTRUCTION OF GAZA where the author lays out the issues for people who have undying loyalty to the Israeli state, born of the Holocaust, seeing it always morally and ethically correct because of the neighborhood in which it resides, and those who find that the Netanyahu government, dominated by right wing nationalists had gone too far in trying to completely destroy Hamas. No one can defend the abhorrent behavior of Hamas, but at what point do we draw the line when contemplating the destruction of an entire society through collective punishment.

It seems that every Jewish person has had the conversation with friends, relatives, and acquaintances over whether as Jews we can still support a government that engages in war crimes. I realize “war crimes” is a difficult term to apply, but I must ask how else can you describe the discriminatory bombing and food deprivation of civilians who are being held hostage by Hamas that has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. It is difficult to hold these discussions with people who firmly believe that Jewish goodness and integrity translates into Israeli virtue and exempts the Netanyahu government from the normal laws of humanity. As Beinart writes, “we are not hard wired to forever endure evil but never commit it. That false innocence, which pervades contemporary Jewish life, camouflages domination as self-defense,” which is at the core of the debate.

Over the years the author has been a stalwart supporter of Palestinian rights, even as he attends shul arguing that Jews are fallible human beings. His goal as Benjamin Moser writes in the May 4, 2025, New York Times is “to wrestle with the knottiness and ambiguity in our sacred texts and correct for the omissions in the mythology of purity that so many of us were taught as children and that many continue to subscribe to as adults.”

(Palestinians walk past the rubble of houses and buildings destroyed during the war, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, January 20, 2024).

Beinart relies on Jewish texts and draws lessons from South Africa, where his family is from, to confront Zionism and what he sees as complicity from the American Jewish establishment in Palestinian oppression. He argues for a Jewish tradition that has no use for Jewish supremacy and treats human equality as a core value. In his book, he appeals to his fellow Jews to grapple with the morality of their defense of Israel. Beinart has a history of changing his opinions be it his support for the Iraq War or tolerating workplace sexual harassment. Beinart’s plea is for the Jewish community to reexamine their views that would require a painful about face concerning views they have held for most of their lives.

Beinart called on American Jews “to defend the dream of a democratic Jewish state before it is too late,” especially in light of the policies perpetrated by a government whose leader is under indictment who clings to power by accommodating the right wing minority in his cabinet. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to prosecute the war on Gaza as a vehicle to remain in power which would avoid a trial and his possible imprisonment. Whether you agree or disagree with the author he should be commended for his courage for standing up to what he believes is correct and accepting the consequences of the loss of friendships, anger from family members, and constant criticism and ostracization by his many critics.

One of Beinart’s major themes revolves around the argument that victimhood often feels like the natural state for Jews throughout history. But this mentality covers up the fact that Jews can be “Pharoah’s too.” This selective vision permeates Jewish life. Jews employ the bible to refute the claim that Israel is a settler-colonial state. Anything that contradicts this contemporary narrative is not accepted. Interestingly the author weaves the ideas of Vladimir Jabotinsky, an important historical figure for right wing Israelis into the narrative, i.e.; the ideology of virtuous colonization, which today has been replaced by virtuous victimhood to support his views.

(Palestinians wait to buy bread in Gaza City, February 3, 2024)

To Beinart’s credit he recounts the brutal Hamas attack of October 7 in detail. He delves into the impact on Israeli families and society and accurately concludes the entire country was a victim on that horrendous day of murder, rape, and kidnappings, not just those who experienced the immediate impact. He even points out how Israeli progressives and leftists in the United States and Europe, ones, political partners reacted with indifference to the attack and many justified Hamas’s actions. The message that was conveyed is that the killing of Jews was nothing new, it’s just the way it has always been.

Many Jews have compared October 7 to the Holocaust, but Beinart concludes there is a fundamental difference . “To preserve Israel’s innocence, it has transforms Palestinians from a subjugated people into the reincarnation of the monsters of the Jewish past, the latest manifestation of the eternal, pathological, genocidal hatred that to the Passover Haggadah, in every generation rises up to destroy us.”

A fighter from Izz al-Din al-Qassam stands in front of a...

(Hamas fighter outside the myriad of tunnels under Gaza)

Beinart tries to understand Hamas’s actions; in doing so he tries to explain the Palestinian mindset as they see themselves as victims of colonialism. They, like other victims in the past, have no army, so they do not follow the rules of warfare and commit barbaric acts characteristic of colonial revolt. However, countries like China and Russia have armies and they do not follow the rules of law in Ukraine, Georgia, Crimea, Chechnya, and in China’s case the victims are the Uyghur population and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups who can be considered genocide victims.

In trying to understand, it is clear “that violent dispossession and violent resistance are intertwined.” In the end Israeli oppression is not the only course of Palestinian violence. It is Palestinians, like all people who are responsible for their actions. However, Israeli oppression makes Palestinian violence more likely. It comes down to despair for the Palestinian people as it is clear there is no way the Netanyahu government will accept a two-state solution.

(Israeli soldiers carry the casket of reservist Elkana Yehuda Sfez, who was killed in combat in Gaza, during his funeral at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem, on Jan. 23, 2024).

In analyzing death figures put out by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the Gaza Health Ministry it is clear that over 50,000 people have died and 20% are probably children. Beinart relies on many sources to verify these numbers, but Israeli leaders minimize the toll and shift blame onto Hamas arguing that Hamas uses human shields, seizes food and supplies targeted for Palestinian civilians, and murders any opposition. However, Beinart’s argument that Hamas’s actions are typical of other insurgent movements is no excuse and to absolve them of one iota of legitimacy is wrong and their actions are considerably heinous when compared to other insurgent movements. But Israel’s strategy to deliver as much destruction as possible in order to shock the Palestinians and get them to turn against Hamas has not been effective. Blaming the Palestinians for Hamas’s 2006 victory at the polls is not valid since the Palestinian people had little choice. Another Israeli argument that they must destroy Hamas to be safe, but it is an impossible task because the alternative Israel must offer, the ability to vote, a high degree of autonomy, and a future state will not be forthcoming so why should Palestinians opt for peace? They need a viable alternative for Hamas which is not forthcoming. In reality, as long as Israel tries to destroy each insurgent group, their actions foster the next generation of insurgents. As Palestinians believe they are not safe, they will do their best to make sure Israelis are not safe also.

In reading Beinart’s work I wondered if there is such a thing as “Jewish exceptionalism” that makes Israel unaccountable for the type of warfare they are waging. Historically I do not see it as other nations/groups have engaged in atrocities and war against civilians have been condemned with sanctions etc.

(Israeli protesters attempt to block the road as aid trucks cross into the Gaza Strip, as Israeli border police watch over them, at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, southern Israel, Jan. 29, 2024)

Another major issue that Beinart raises is that of the “new anti-Semitism.” Israel has equated any criticism of its actions as anti-Semitic as a vehicle of deflecting criticism of what they are doing in Gaza. In doing so they turn the conversation about the war into a conversation about the motives of people who oppose their actions. What is clear is that when Israel kills Palestinians, what is perceived to be anti-Semitism increases, but the Israeli government conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism in order to depict Palestinians and their supporters as bigots, therefore turning a conversation about the oppression of Palestinians into a conversation about the oppression of Jews. In the end Judaism and Israel are separate and Jews, the world over should not be blamed for the actions of the Israeli government.

A great deal of Beinart’s discussion revolves around the actions of American Jews who support Israel’s policies. It seems as progressives in the United States turn against Israel they are forcing Jews to choose; defend exclusion in Israel or inclusion in the United States and some of America’s leading institutions are choosing the former.

(Israeli soldiers practice evacuating wounded people with a helicopter during a military drill in northern Israel, in preparation for a potential escalation in the conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, on Feb. 20, 2025)

Beinart offers a comparison of historical situations that are somewhat similar to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He delves into apartheid in South Africa and the fears of white Afrikaners; he discusses the hatred and fears that existed in Northern Ireland until a settlement was reached overcoming Protestant fears of the IRA; the Reconstruction period in the late 19^th century in the United States is explored as southern whites feared the newly freed black population and fueled by northern liberals. In these situations, the key to avoiding as much violence as possible was to give the aggrieved party the vote and a voice to express their concerns because inclusion yields greater, not total safety.

I do not believe that Beinart is naive enough to support the idea that if a settlement ever arrives between Israel and the Palestinians that peace will break out in the Middle East. In a region where Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and numerous other terrorist groups abound violence will lessen, but the author’s emotional and heart felt appeal for reconciliation is really the only hope for the future no matter how impossible that appears today. I admire Beinart’s beliefs and the professional risks he has taken to engage the public in a proper debate – that should be allowed in a free society and the back and forth between those who disagree should be civil, not based on fear.

DEATH IS OUR BUSINESS: RUSSIAN MERCENARIES AND THE NEW ERA OF PRIVATE WARFARE by John Lechner

May 15, 2025May 15, 2025szfreiberger African History, Middle Eastern History, Russian History Leave a comment

(Yevgeny Prigozhi in Saint Petersburg in 2016)

In June 2023, it appeared for the first time there was a clear threat to the rule of Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin. This risk to Putin’s reign was fostered by the inability of Russian forces to achieve a quick victory after it invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and was unable to overthrow and replace Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The danger Putin faced was the work of the Wagner Group, under the leadership of Yevgeny Prigozhin, his former chef and caterer who led the armed rebellion against the Russian government. This rebellion, which lasted for about a day, was a culmination of simmering tensions between the Wagner Group and the Russian Ministry of Defense and the fact that the fighting had reached a World War I type of stalemate. Prigozhin accused the Russian military of shelling Wagner positions, refusing to resupply his troops, and also criticized the Russian leadership for their “maximalist positions” in the war in Ukraine. It is interesting to analyze Putin’s response to Prigozhin and his private army since it was Russia’s most effective fighting force against the Ukrainian army. The rebellion ultimately failed, as Prigozhin got cold feet as his army marched toward Moscow. Prigozhin turned his forces away from the Russian capital and reached an agreement to move Wagner forces to Belarus. However, in the end Prigozhin went the way of others who opposed Putin as he died in a plane crash on August 23, 2023. Despite the death of their leader, the Wagner group lives on with its political business and military ventures as a pillar of the Russian government’s operations the world over.

As the bloody conflict continues to play out in Ukraine journalist John Lechner’s latest book, DEATH IS OUR BUSINESS: RUSSIAN MERCENARIES AND THE NEW ERA OF PRIVATE WARFARE has been published at a propitious time. Lechner’s excellent monograph is an education describing the origins of the Wagner group, its methods, and operations. We witness how the Wagner group gains a foothold in fragile nation states, gains access to a country’s natural resources, removes peacekeeping forces, all to cash in on the instability of weak states that possess resources that are viewed as vital for Russian strategic interests, and the profitability of the group itself.

Dirt graves with wooden crosses and red, yellow and black wreaths.

(The US says the Wagner Group has suffered more than 30,000 casualties)

Lechner points out in his introduction that after a two hundred year hiatus, private warfare has returned, albeit in new ways. For most of history private armies and mercenaries were the norm, nevertheless at the end of the Thirty Years War (1660) European rulers saw the advantage in recruiting public standing armies within their borders. By the 19^th century, the nation state was largely responsible for the prosecution of warfare on the continent. However, private armies were employed by colonial powers to subdue far-flung regions and governments would outsource the exploitation of colonies to private companies. Once decolonization made headway following World War II and late in the Cold War the United States and Soviet Union began to relax its financial and military support from previous colonial regions, they would partly turn to privatization both internally and externally. Newly independent countries would outsource their security requirements to private military companies, and the United States would turn to the privatization of warfare following 9/11. By 2010, private contractors outnumbered American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the most famous of which was Blackwater. Lechner describes two types of private military companies. First, mercenary companies are private armies that conduct autonomous military campaigns. Military enterprises, like Blackwater, augment a powerful state’s regular armed forces and embed with one government. Secondly, the two types were merged into a new novel private military company. This new organization was cultivated and advanced by Yevgeny Prigozhin.

(Donbas Basin)

Lechner delves into a number of Private Military Contractors (PMC) providing details on recruitment, operations, geographic involvement, and important personnel. However, the author’s most important focus is the Wagner Group under the direction and tight control of Yevgeny Prigozhin. In 2014, on the heels of Russia’s invasion of Crimea, Prigozhin linked up with Dmitry Utkin, a career soldier a member of an intelligence unit, and carried out training and proxy wars for the GRU to create the Wagner Group which would prove to be an effective fighting force with brutal enforcers in the rear. By 2015, working closely with the Ministry of Defense in Syria, and autonomously in northern and central Africa the group spread its influence and profitability. By 2018 Wagner forces seemed everywhere from Madagascar to Mozambique, in addition to becoming the “tip of the spear” of Russian assertiveness. By August 2022 Wagner mercenaries were fighting in eastern Ukraine and successfully reached the outskirts of Bakhmut. Prigozhin’s success rested on his ability to recognize opportunity in unstable situations, bringing a team together to take advantage of the situation in a nation’s capital and on the ground, especially in Africa which had over 100 million refugees, and employing social media highlighted by misinformation to enhance his reputation and ego.

Alexey DRUZHININ/SPUTNIK/AFP Yevgeny Prigozhin shows Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin his school lunch factory outside Saint Petersburg on September 20, 2010 (“I had known Prigozhin for a very long time, since the 1990s,” Vladimir Putin recalled)

Lechner is clear that today there is little distinction between soldiers and mercenaries in large part because of globalization. When one examines Russian recruitment of PMC and those in other countries it is clear that Lechner is correct. Russian mercenaries presented as “little green men,” many on “vacation” and began appearing in 2014 in Crimea and the Donbas. Lechner accurately explains Putin’s motivations involving the expansion of NATO, western plots against Russia, and his desire to recreate the Russian empire. Putin was supported by the growth of domestic nationalist Russian ideologues witnessed by the number of volunteers who came to fight in Ukraine believing that Ukraine belonged to Russia harkening back to Catherine the Great and Lenin who artificially designated Ukraine and Belarus.

The turning point for Prigozhin came with the invasion of Crimea as his contacts with the Ministry of Defense provided a degree of access to Putin who allowed him to become the handler of mercenaries in the Donbas – it is here that he and Utkin created the Wagner Group. Slowly they were able to do away with other mercenary leaders and centralize other separatist militias into one. This would be accomplished for the most part in 2015. Prigozhin was an entrepreneur who envisioned a PMC like Erik Prince’s Blackwater. He would get his start in Syria, supported the regime of Bashir Assad and helped arm, train, and participate in the brutal civil war designed to overthrow the murderous government in Damascus.

Russia formally intervened in Syria in 2015, and the first Wagner fighters entered the conflict in September of that year. Lechner describes the brutality of the civil war, highlighted by Assad’s use of poisonous gases, cluster bombs, and doing anything to remain in power. He could not have done so without the Wagner Group. The key for the group is that it developed its own esprit de corps. Their soldiers were mercenaries, but they were also Russian patriots, men willing to fight and die for the motherland, more so than the Russian military. Their success provided Prigozhin with greater access to Putin directly to circumvent the Ministry of Defense.

Reuters Yevgeny Prigozhin helping Vladimir Putin at a dinner table, 2011 (Yevgeny Prigozhin (left) pictured serving Vladimir Putin (centre) at a dinner in 2011)

Lechner carefully lays out the structure of the Wagner Group and breaks it down into its military and business components. Prigozhin would create a corporate structure, first called Evro-Polis from which he negotiated contracts with governments and gained access to their natural resources, provided military services, and protection. The group drew from varying ideologies and priorities, most of which were various degrees of nationalists and white supremacists. Much of the group’s strategy was designed to seize oil and gas fields, mineral mining, and other lucrative opportunities in the countries they were involved.

The Wagner Group proliferated across central and northern Africa feasting on the resources of the Central African Republic, Libya, Chad, Sudan, Mali, Syria, and Niger. Most people think of the Wagner forces as it relates to the Donbas, but Lechner spends a good part of his monograph detailing how Prigozhin penetrated Africa, the contracts he signed, the coups and counter coups he was involved in, and the many personalities he dealt with, many of course were as ruthless as he was – perhaps that was why he was so successful. By 2021 Prigozhin and his PMC were truly global. The threat he represented for the west was proof to the Kremlin that his initiatives were a worthy investment. Their effectiveness was less important than the west’s reaction to them.

In developing his material, Lechner relied on interviews with the relevant government officials and soldiers, especially 30 members of the Wagner Group. Lechner’s success rests on beautiful first-person writing with granular reporting. Further, the author is an exceptional linguist as he speaks Russian and Chechen as well as Sango, the language of the Central African Republic. His interviews saw him travel across war zones in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East to the point he was almost kidnaped. Lechner witnessed the viciousness and cruelty in which the Wagner Group operated, a group that would eventually morph into a 50,000 man private army.

Reuters Yevgeny Prigozhin makes a statement as he stand next to Wagner fighters in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in Bakhmut, Ukraine, in this still image taken from video released May 20, 2023 (Prigozhin became most vocal in a series of video statements from Bakhmut where he criticised the defence establishment)

Prigozhin’s forces were initially deployed after the annexation of Crimea, a year later the Wagner Group was sent to the Donbas region to support the pro-Russian separatists. They would participate in destabilizing the region, taking control of key locations, and directly engaging in combat. A major component of their actions was to eliminate dissident pro-Russian commanders, potentially through assassination. The Wagner Group’s actions contributed to the escalation of the Donbas conflict and the overall instability in eastern Ukraine. By 2022 and onward they played a significant role in the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, even recruiting prison inmates for frontline combat operations – estimated to number between 48-49,000. These men would die by the thousands in the Donbas meat grinder, but for Prigozhin they served their purpose. Eventually Prigozhin let his substantial ego get in the way and threatened to march on Moscow, as stated earlier it did not go well.

In the end, according to Nicolas Niarchos in his May 13, 2025, review in the New York Times, the Wagner Group “was an effective boogeyman, mercenaries of all stripes have proliferated across the map of this century’s conflicts, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Yemen. “The West was happy to leverage Wagner as shorthand for all the evils of a war economy,” Lechner writes. “But the reality is that the world is filled with Prigozhins.”

Lechner is right. When Wagner fell, others rose in its stead, although they were kept on a tighter leash by Russian military intelligence. In Ukraine, prisoners are still being used in combat and Russia maintains a tight lid on its casualty figures. Even if the war in Ukraine ends soon, as President Trump has promised, Moscow’s mercenaries will still be at work dividing their African cake. Prigozhin may be dead, but his hammer is still a tool: It doesn’t matter if he’s around to swing it or not.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin points his finger, his gaze his slightly past the camera

(Yevgeny Prigozhin says he was required to “apologise and obey” in order to secure ammunition for his troops)

THE ILLEGALS: RUSSIA’S MOST AUDACIOUS SPIES AND THEIR CENTURY LONG MISSION TO INFILTRATE THE WEST by Shaun Walker

May 6, 2025szfreiberger Cold War, Espionage, Russian History Leave a comment

(The Lubyanka Building in Moscow, Russia, is most famously known as the former headquarters of the KGB (Soviet secret police) and now houses the FSB (Federal Security Service)

For six seasons between 2013 and 2018, “The Americans,” an American spy drama television series aired on the FX channel. It depicted the Jennings family as a typical suburban American family. There were two teenagers and parents who happened to be KGB spies at the outset of the Reagan administration who try to come across as your average American family grouping. Their job was to spy on the United States during a period when the Cold War was escalating. This Kremlin strategy of embedding spies in the role of everyday citizens was not an aberration as since the Russian Revolution brought the Bolsheviks to power, Moscow began deploying Soviet citizens abroad as deep-cover spies, training them to fit into American society and posing as different characters. In our current heightened environment with Russian aggression in Ukraine, interference in American elections, and Vladimir Putin’s obsession with recreating the Soviet Empire it is not beyond the realm of possibilities that Russia has continued this strategy today.

In his latest book, THE ILLEGALS: RUSSIA’S MOST AUDACIOUS SPIES AND THEIR CENTURY LONG MISSION TO INFILTRATE THE WEST, Shaum Walker, an international correspondent for The Guardian brings the Russian strategy to life as he explores the KGB’s most secretive program. His excellent monograph conveys a thrilling spy drama culminating with Putin’s espionage achievements as the Kremlin continues to infiltrate pro-western countries worldwide. In the current international climate Walker’s study is an important one as we try to combat Putin’s autocracy, particularly in light of Donald Trump’s seeming infatuation with the Russian autocrat.

Ishkak Akhmerov (undated)

Walker begins his study by introducing the reader to Ann Foley and her husband Don Heathfield, and their two sons Tim and Alex, However, in reality they were Russian spies; Elena Vavilova and Andrei Berzukov who had lived as a couple in Cambridge, MA for years. They would be arrested by the FBI and deported back to Russia in 2010. Their vocation was part of “the Illegal” program.

Illegals were recruited by the KGB. They were ordinary Soviet citizens who were given years of training to mold them into westerners. During the Cold War, the illegals living in the west were told to lie low and wait. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, the KGB was disbanded. However, once Putin assumed power he began to restore Russian spy capabilities, including “the Illegals” and a fresh batch of operatives was trained. Walker correctly argues that flying illegals based in Moscow on short term missions to assassinate enemies of the Kremlin abroad was standard policy. “A new army of ‘virtual illegals’ impersonated westerners on social media and were a key part of Russia’s attempts to meddle in foreign elections. Even if the era of long term illegals seemed over, the concepts underpinning their work remained at the heart of Russian intelligence operations.” It is clear that at various points during the last century the era of illegals seemed to be over. However, each time Russia’s spymasters resurrected the program. Today, a network of SVR safe houses scattered around Moscow has produced a new generation of operatives undergoing preparation for deployment overseas. They spend their time honing the pronunciation of target languages, studying archives of foreign newspapers and magazines to absorb culture and social context, and memorizing details of their cover stories. Soon, this new generation of illegals will be deployed to live what appears to be mundane lives in various locations around the world, while secretly implementing Moscow’s agenda.

Image shows the DVD cover for the 2003 film 'Cambridge Spies'. On the cover are four men standing face on and the film title above them.

Walker lays out the early history of using illegals by discussing their use before the Russian Revolution to overthrow the Tsar, and once in power as a vehicle to be used against the west and for their own survival. The strategy is based on Konspiratsiya, defined as “subterfuge,” or “conspiracy,” – “a set of complex rules, a rigid behavioral tool, and a way of life, the overarching arm….was to keep party operatives undercover and undetected, and was used by many groups of anti-Tsarist revolutionaries.”

Walker does a credible job explaining the Bolshevik approach toward espionage especially when they did not have diplomatic recognition in the west which meant they had no embassies to hide spies. The result was to develop the illegal program further. The author describes the role of many incredible operatives and their impact on the course of history. Men like Meer Trislisser, a Bolshevik operative, and Dmitry Bystrolyotov, another Russian spy perhaps the most talented illegal in the history of the program, make for fascinating reading as they navigate their training, implement what they have learned as they integrate into other societies, how they recruited local nationals to spy for them, and how successful they were in acquiring intelligence.

(Grigulevich (Castro) and his wife during their stay in Brazil in 1946).

The program was run through the Cheka’s ION office which was in charge of the illegal program. A case in point is how they flipped an English communications officer, Ernest Oldham, into providing documents which covered much of the secret European diplomacy, i.e., impact of the depression, Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, etc. It is clear that the Soviets were far ahead of the British and Americans when it came to espionage, especially when Franklin Roosevelt granted the Soviet Union formal recognition which provided them with an embassy in Washington to run their agents. Since the American economic influence was worldwide spies were needed to ferret out US positions. In addition, the Kremlin needed to industrialize quickly, and American technological and scientific secrets were a major target led by the fascinating figure of Ishak Akmerov who would train Americans like Michael Straight and Laurence Duggan, both with strong ties to the US State Department.

Walker’s insights into the assassination of Leon Trotsky, Stalin’s purges and “show trials” of the 1930s, and the awkwardness created by the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 reflect the role played by a series of illegals who were trained assassins and acquired the ability to hunt down anyone whom Stalin deemed a threat. Stalin’s purges would decimate the military leadership and foreign intelligence sources, but information still flowed from England from the “Cambridge 5,” who were a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and the Cold war and was active from the 1930s until at least the early 1950s. The five were convinced that the Marxism-Leninism of Soviet communism was the best available political system and the best defense against fascism. All pursued successful careers in branches of the British government. They passed large amounts of intelligence to the Soviets, so much so that the KGB became suspicious that at least some of it was false. Perhaps as important as the specific state secrets was the demoralizing effect to the British establishment of their slow unmasking and the mistrust in British security this caused in the United States. In addition, Soviet agents like Richard Sorge became friends with Eugen Ott, the Nazi ambassador to Japan who along with others provided Stalin with evidence of the impending German invasion of Russia in 1941. Stalin and NKVD head, Lavrenti Beria rejected this intelligence as scaremongering as it went against Russian official policy. In June 1941, the Kremlin would pay for their stubborn adherence to the strict laws of Marxism-Leninism and Stalin’s perceptions of Hitler who he believed would have to defeat England before he could invade Russia.

(Former KGB head Yuri Andropov)

About a quarter the way into the book, Walker turns to the Cold War and successfully argues that Stalin’s ability to negotiate a favorable postwar settlement was assisted by the work of the Cambridge 5 in England as they produced innumerable numbers of documents and intelligence. Anthony Blunt, Donald MacLean, and Kim Philby, all members of the Cambridge 5 were essential figures and Philby himself was put in charge of British counterespionage! In fact, Walker argues that Stalin knew about the atomic bomb much earlier than Harry Truman which is why at the Potsdam Conference he did not act surprised when the president warned him about the new weapons.

(Elena Vavilova and Andréi Bezrúkov, in Moscow, while training for the KGB)

Walker goes into detail concerning Stalin’s fears of Josef Broz Tito, the leader of Yugoslavia who believed in a neutral approach to the Cold War and its path toward implementing socialism. Tito was able to act in this manner because his forces liberated his country from the Nazis, which was not the case throughout eastern Europe. Stalin tasked Iosif Grigulevich, a Soviet illegal to assassinate Tito. Interestingly, earlier Grigulevich was also involved in a failed attempt to kill Leon Trotsky. Stalin would fail to kill Tito, who would remain a thorn in his side and Russia in general. The dispute with Tito would last until Stalin died in March 1953 which also saved thousands of others he implicated in the Doctor’s Plot, a conspiracy that Jews were out to kill the Russian dictator.

Many of Walker’s chapters are like a movie script for an espionage thriller. Perhaps one of the most interesting chapters deals with a Soviet agent’s ability to gain connections in the Vatican and manage to become the Costa Rican ambassador to the Vatican at a time when there was a fear in the west of a communist victory in Italy. Other fascinating chapters include the life and work of Yuri Linov, a young man who was very facile with foreign languages and began his KGB career informing on fellow students while studying at the university. By 1961 he would be trained as an illegal and deployed to the United States. Linov was very patriotic, seeing Soviet success in space with the mission of Yuri Gagarin as proof of Russian exceptionalism. Walker describes his recruitment, training, and missions in detail providing the reader with further insight into the illegal program. First, Linov would find himself in Prague during the summer of 1968 ordered to infiltrate the liberal reform movement under the government of Alexander Dubcek, and by 1970 his training and focus shifted to the Middle East as his handlers steered him to becoming the KGB’s expert on Zionism. Apart from Linov’s espionage work, Walker delves into personal aspects of an “illegal” life. He examines how his wife Tamara was chosen for him, and the difficulties their careers presented for them on a personal level. At a time when it was becoming more and more difficult to choose, train, and deploy illegals, Linov’s work seemed to be a success.

AFP Paraphernalia belonging to KGB agent, including a minature camera, seen at the spy museum in Oberhausen, Germany (Illegals operate without diplomatic cover and blend in like ordinary citizens)

Walker also presents the American attempt to implement its own illegal program, and concluded it was almost impossible to train operatives in the intricacies of Soviet life and equip them with a story and documents that would stand up to Soviet security. The KGB on the other hand remained doggedly committed to a system that no longer seemed worth the enormous time and effort. The question is why? According to the author a number of reasons emerge. First, the institutional memory of success from the early Soviet period and its roots in Bolshevik idealism kept the KGB wedded to illegal work as a key part of their own internal mythology. Second, under the leadership of Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev who was in such poor health as being functionally useless as a leader that massive change could not take place. Third, by the late 1970s few of Russia’s 290 million people were permitted to leave the Soviet Union. Those who were allowed to leave experienced a lack of free movement because of surveillance. As result, the only people who had some freedom in other countries were the illegals and they became the only reliable source of intelligence for Soviet leadership.

Once Yuri Andropov headed the KGB (1967-1982) he would employ illegals as he saw fit. Having witnessed the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 as ambassador to Hungary he would use all tools at hand to block any threat to Soviet control. Prague has already been mentioned, and Andropov had no qualms about employing illegals in Afghanistan in 1978 and assisting in a coup against the regime in Kabul that would lead to the Soviet version of “Vietnam” as it would be stuck in the Afghan quagmire that ultimately led to the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Toward the end of the narrative Walker reintegrates the lives of Tracey Lee Ann Foley and Donald Heathfield into the monograph. He uses them as background to the emergence of Vladimir Putin as Soviet Premier and President. Interestingly, the two were dispatched to the United States during Gorbachev’s “glasnost” period as the KGB remained paranoid of the United States. Walker explains the meteoric rise of Putin and the restoration of the “KGB” mindset in Russia under a new organization, the SVR. Putin would rekindle the illegal program as part of a process to restore Russia to great power status which continues to this day. For a complete examination of Putin’s rise and career the two best biographies are Steven Lee Myers’ THE NEW TSAR: THE RISE AND REIGN OF VLADIMIR PUTIN and Philip Short’s recent work, PUTIN.

(SVR Yuri Drozdov had a legendary reputation in Soviet and Russian intelligence circles)

Under Putin, Foley and Putin would continue their espionage work and lives replicating an American couple until the FBI got wind of their work and arrested them. It is fair to conclude as does Joseph Finder in his New York Times, April 17, 2025, book review that “despite periods of diplomatic warming, Putin has never abandoned his illegals. He ordered the program revitalized in 2004, three years before his Munich speech signaled the return of Cold War tensions. While America was busy declaring the “end of history,” Russia was quietly training a new generation of agents to live among us.

Walker’s book serves as a reminder that somewhere in Russia right now, ordinary citizens are being molded into simulacrum Americans, learning to enjoy Starbucks and complain about property taxes, prepared to live among us regardless of who occupies the White House or how many summit handshakes take place. In international relations, as in life, it’s the quiet ones you need to watch.”

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