3 - Elizabeth Bentley: The Case of the Blond Spy Queen

Summary

The headline in the new york world telegram on july 21, 1948, “Red Ring Bared by Its Blond Queen” began one of the most important and most frustrating of the early Cold War spy cases. Its importance stems from the astounding number of Soviet spies, more than thirty, identified by Elizabeth Bentley and the impact of her revelations on shaping the attitudes of the American public toward Soviet espionage and the role American Communists played in it. What gave the Bentley affair its frustrating aspect, however, is that none of those she identified as Soviet sources were ever tried for espionage and only two were imprisoned, one, a minor figure, for perjury and another for contempt of court.

The U.S. Justice Department decided not to bring espionage charges because the cases came down to the word of a single witness, Elizabeth Bentley, a former Soviet spy and ex-Communist, against the denials of those she accused – with no documentary or other direct evidence of espionage. The FBI amassed sufficient indirect supporting evidence to convince it of Bentley's truthfulness. Federal prosecutors, however, judged that juries, even if convinced that Bentley was probably telling the truth, would be unlikely to send someone to prison without direct corroborating evidence. Because there were no trials on the central aspects of Bentley's claims, most of the evidence the FBI gathered remained secret for nearly fifty years, and the Bentley case faded from public memory.