When Elizabeth Bentley slunk into an FBI field office in 1945, she
was thinking only of saving herself from NKGB assassins who were
hot on her trail. She had no idea that she was about to start the
greatest Red Scare in U.S. history.
Bentley (1908-1963) was a Connecticut Yankee and Vassar graduate
who spied for the Soviet Union for seven years. She met with dozens
of highly placed American agents who worked for the Soviets,
gathering their secrets and stuffing sensitive documents into her
knitting bag. But her Soviet spymasters suspected her of
disloyalty--and even began plotting to silence her forever. To save
her own life, Bentley decided to betray her friends and comrades to
the FBI. Her defection effectively shut down Soviet espionage in
the United States for years.
Despite her crucial role in the cultural and political history of
the early Cold War, Bentley has long been overlooked or
underestimated by historians. Now, new documents from Russian and
American archives make it possible to assess the veracity of her
allegations. This long overdue biography rescues Elizabeth Bentley
from obscurity and tells her dramatic life story.