You know, for those of you who were taught that Joe McCarthy made such things up, and that there were not penetrations of sensitive programs and agencies by ideologues working for Moscow.

He had all-American cover: born in Iowa, college in Manhattan, Army buddies with whom he played baseball.

George Koval also had a secret. During World War II, he was a top Soviet spy, code named Delmar and trained by StalinÂ’s ruthless bureau of military intelligence.

Atomic spies are old stuff. But historians say Dr. Koval, who died in his 90s last year in Moscow and whose name is just coming to light publicly, was probably one of the most important spies of the 20th century.

On Nov. 2, the Kremlin startled Western scholars by announcing that President Vladimir V. Putin had posthumously given the highest Russian award to a Soviet agent who penetrated the Manhattan Project to build the atom bomb.

The announcement hailed Dr. Koval as “the only Soviet intelligence officer” to infiltrate the project’s secret plants, saying his work “helped speed up considerably the time it took for the Soviet Union to develop an atomic bomb of its own.”

Of course, we've known for years that stuff like this went on, but a loud chorus of denial cried out from the Left. Even now, when mounds of evidence has shown there were communists in the Departments of State and Defense and that the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss were guilty as sin, those who espouse such positions are called Red-baiters. Will one more candid admission by the heirs of the Kremlin do anything to lay to rest the canard that there was no Red Menace? I'd like to hope that it would, but I fear that ideology will continue to trump truth on this matter.

Posted by: Greg at 11:33 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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