Title: Cold War exile
First published: 1995
Description: In 1953 Maurice Halperin was called before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee to defend himself against allegations of espionage. He was accused of having supplied Soviet sources with classified material from the Office of Strategic Services while he was an employee during World War II.

The Cold War was in full force. McCarthyism was at its peak. Caught up in the rapids of history, Maurice Halperin's life spun out of control. Denying the charges but knowing he could never fully clear his name, Halperin fled to Mexico and then, to avoid extradition, to Moscow in 1958. Among the friends he made there were British spy Donald MacLean and Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara. Disenchanted with socialism in the Soviet Union, he accepted Guevara's invitation to come to Havana in 1962.

There he worked for Castro's government for five years before political tension and his own disillusionment with Cuban socialism forced him to leave for Vancouver, Canada.

Was Halperin a spy or a scapegoat? Was he a victim of red-baiting or a one-time Communist espionage agent who eventually lost faith in Communism? Halperin's accuser was Elizabeth Bentley, a confessed Soviet courier who accused more than one hundred Americans of spying. Yet Bentley had no proof and Halperin has always maintained his innocence. One of them must have been lying.

As Kirschner unravels the engrossing facts of the case - utilizing FBI files and dozens of interviews, including extensive interviews with Halperin himself - the reader becomes the investigator in a riveting real-life spy mystery. Along the way Kirschner offers new material on the OSS and further disturbing information about J. Edgar Hoover's use of his considerable power.
Subjects: Secret service, Cold War, World War, 1939-1945, Academic freedom, College teachers, Biography, World war, 1939-1945, secret service
Places: United States
People: Maurice Halperin (1906-)
LC classification: LA2317.H36 A3 1995