In the Enemy's House by Howard Blum ** (of 4)

A true story of the FBI breaking a seemingly impossible code and using their findings to uncover the Soviet agents who stole America's atomic secrets. You would think that having access to minute-by-minute code analysis, dogged footwork by FBI agents, and the internal conflicts of characters on both sides of the chase (How can Blum even know such things?) would make for heart-thumping reading. Not only does the hunt fail to come to life, however, but the parts missing from the book speak far louder than what was included.

J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, like much of America in the 1940s and 1950s was a racist, anti-Catholic, anti-Communist, unforgiving bastion of toxic masculinity (Hoover's predilection for wearing women's clothing and dating other men, notwithstanding.) Nearly every so-called turncoat uncovered in this book was a young Jewish ideologue from New York City who worked, not in exchange for remuneration, but for some higher calling. Was it because the Americans had stiffed their Russian allies, without whose resistance and assistance, Hitler might have succeeded? Or, the fact that Americans as World War II ended immediately absorbed hundreds of Nazi scientists while launching an anti-Communist witch hunt of Trumpian validity? Or, maybe even more fundamentally, was it because communism, as it was perceived in its early days, held obvious appeal to outcast Americans that believed in equality, shared government, and equitable distribution of resources. 

On the other hand, I have to hand it to the Russians and their spycraft. They were stealing American secrets from the beginning of WW II and have never stopped. (Presumably, the U.S. has done the same.) But, kudos to them for their ability to disrupt American elections in 2016 with a small investment in a computer farm doling out fake stories for social media, and while everyone in the U.S. was on the lookout for election interference in 2020, the Russians were busy inserting their spyware into computers in the Pentagon, nuclear labs, intelligence agencies and Fortune 500 companies. In the Enemy's House makes it clear that Russian spies have been probing the west for decades.