The Jewish Atomic Spy in America Who Got Away

Was the Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s nothing but political hysteria? For all its deleterious effects on free speech rights, reputations, and careers, it seems not. Cold War fears of the domestic threat of Soviet Communism -- fanned by Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee, among others -- were surely overblown. But at their core was a kernel of justified worry. We now know that there was a fifth column: an ideologically motivated network of U.S.-based spies, of various nationalities, who stole American secrets, including atomic ones.