Free Republic

Viorel Florescu/staff photographer Retired Washington Township math teacher Miriam Moskowitz, 98, leaving federal court in New York City on Thursday with Caren Ponty, left, and her nephew Ira Moskowitz, after U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled against her petition to reverse her 1950 felony conviction related to atomic espionage. Miriam Moskowitz has been called a lot of things in her 98 years of life — feisty, aggressive and possessing a violent temper, among them. But the one label that bothers her most is spy for the former Soviet Union — a moniker given to her by the government.  That...

PHILADELPHIA -- Candidates for public office in Pennsylvania no longer have to sign a McCarthy-era loyalty oath pledging that they are not "subversive." The requirement was unconstitutional, Attorney General Tom Corbett has told election officials. The change was ordered after John Staggs refused to sign the oath when he turned in nominating petitions earlier this year and then threatened to sue the state. "I believe their definition of 'subversive' can really apply to anyone," said Staggs, 59, who is running for a state legislative seat. "They want to be able to pick and choose, so they can use it versus...

Intelligence in Recent Public Literature The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era By Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev. New York: Random House, 1999. Reviewed by William Nolte This review originally appeared in Studies in Intelligence 42, no. 4 (1998), a classified issue. See the preceeding review of The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov. [Alger] Hiss and [Whittaker] Chambers worked together as Soviet source and courier from late 1934 until the latter’s defection from the underground in 1938. Two generations of controversy can be compressed into that spare, declarative statement from The Haunted Wood, by Allen Weinstein and former...