his wife recommended her as a clever girl. Ruth has learned that her hus-
band was called up by the Army, but he has not been sent to the front. He
is a mechanical engineer and is now working at the Enormozplant.”^13Enormozwas Moscow’s code word for the Anglo-American nuclear
weapons program. Does the message show that Ethel was engaged in
espionage, perhaps even “nuclear” espionage? How much did NKVD
case officers know about her relationship with her husband, or with the
Communist Party? How accurately does this isolated message reflect
the inner workings of the Rosenberg ring? The FBI made judgments
based on these intercepts, and scholars continue to disagree with the
judgment of law enforcement officials caught up a half-century ago in
the hunt for spies.
On the other hand, it is highly unlikely that we will ever fully under-
stand why Stalin contemptuously ignored warnings of a German inva-
sion. We will never understand why defendants in the Moscow Show
Trials confessed, knowing that Stalin was unlikely to spare their lives
no matter what they might do. It is almost absolutely certain that we will
never get a full accounting of the loss of life during the Soviet era. Fi-
nally, we will never have an answer to questions posed by dozens of
Western and Soviet intelligence officers in their memoirs and in official
histories as to which side won the intelligence cold war.
As a former officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, I believe
that intelligence is the handmaiden of policy and that the Western ser-
vices won because their political masters were more successful and
less ideological in their use of intelligence. However, I am willing to
agree with those on the other side that the Soviet services won a great
many of the battles. Writing of the disparity of won battles and a lost
cause, an intelligence officer wrote an interesting epithet for the KGB:
“Perhaps no government in contemporary history had intelligence on
its adversaries that was accurate as that provided to Moscow. Its often
documentary information was obtained with access to information at
the highest levels. Western powers, by contrast, received little compa-
rable information on Soviet plans, capabilities, or intentions. Our
analysis of the recently released KGB archival material reveals that
the Soviet treasure trove of information never shaped Soviet policy as
it could have.”^14
A final note. As a former employee of the Central Intelligence
Agency, I submitted this manuscript to them for a security review. Re-xxxiv •INTRODUCTION06-313 (00) FM.qxd 7/27/06 7:53 AM Page xxxiv