National Archives
Lenin Plot November 19, 2020
Greetings from the National Archives. I am David Ferriero Archivist of the United States and it is
my pleasure to welcome you to this book talk with Barnes Carr, author of the Lenin Plot The untold
Story of America's Midnight War Against Russia. Before we begin, I would like to tell you about
two upcoming programs you can view on our YouTube channel. On Tuesday November 24th at 7:00 p.m.
Denise Kiernan will discuss her latest book We Gather Together The book tells the story of Sarah
Josepha Hale who in the 19th century campaigned to establish an annual day day of Thanksgiving. On
Monday November 30th at noon William Thomas III will be here to talk about his book A Question of
Freedom, The Families who Challenged Slavery from the Nation’s Founding to the Civil War. Thomas
brings us the story of the enslaved families in Maryland who filed hundreds of suits for their
freedom between 1787 and 1861. in the lenin Plot Barnes Carr relates the little-known story of
a US-backed plot to topple and replace Vladimir Lenin as the leader of revolutionary Russia after
the bolshevik rise to power. Using records from the National Archives and other institutions
Barnes Carr weaves the story of intrigue and espionage during the last year of World War I when
the allied powers sought to bring Russia back into the war against Germany. It's now my pleasure to
turn you over to our guest author Barnes Carr. Barnes Carr was born in the Mississippi Delta
and has lived in New Orleans most of his life. Carr started out as a reporter and photographer
covering civil rights stories for the New York Herald Tribune, the Memphis Press Scimitar and
United Press International, later he worked as a copy editor for the Washington Evening Star and
the New Orleans Statesman. A short story based on his experiences in New Orleans during hurricane
Katrina received a William Faulkner gold medal for fiction in 2013. In addition to the Lenin Plot
Barnes Carr is author of Operation Whisper which details the espionage careers of Morris and Iona
Cohen, the first soviet spies to steal a complete diagram of the first atomic bomb now let's hear
from Barnes Carr thank you for joining us today >> >>: Thank you very much. It's my pleasure now to introduce
my moderator. Professor Vin McCarthy the principal lecturer in the school of arts
and media at Tee Side University in Yorkshire. Hope I pronounced that correctly. Vin lives
in Edinburgh and is a dedicated Scott. Proudly a Scott. A Writer and researcher and consultant specializing
in biographies and the Cold War. He's followed a dual career in higher education and broadcast
television producing programs in the arts, education, entertainment and current affairs.
He taught television production and biographical writing at the Universities of Bournemouth and
Tee Side. Most recently a ghost writer for the privately commissioned memoirs of the imminent
Scottish engineer Tom Douglas. He contributes book reviews and obits to the Herald and the Scotsman in Scotland. Best known
for Like Father Like Son. A Dynasty of Spies. Which is the story, the biographical account of
the life of Willie Fisher. Also known as Rudolph Abel. He was a very important control officer
for Morrison in New York. The book was published as a paperback as Abel: The True Story of
the Spy They Traded for Gary Powers. The books were based on an original
TV documentary that Vin did. He's been praised by many reviewers including Mary
Kay Wilmers, editor of the London Review of Books. And Borris Legusof, former press bureau chief of
the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, also spy novelist John LeCarre. Welcome Vin.
>> >>: Hi. Thank you for that very long introduction. I should point out I am not a
Scott. I am an Englishman who lives in Scotland. And that is interesting In the context of your book because the tension
between English and the Scots come out in your book. Thank you so much for all of
that. Talking about the Lenin Plot here today. Noon your time, evening our time. What
began your interest in this Lenin story. It's phenomenal. Your background earlier is
surprising. What got your interest going. >> >>: I was a student a
senior at Tulane University and I was in the library one afternoon and I
met a gentleman who had been in the first war, World War I. And he told me he had lived in
Paris after the war and had known some Americans including Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and Ernest and Hadley Hemingway cruised with that crowd, and also met young American men who had served in Russia in our war against Russia. I said
wait a minute, I never heard anything about that. He said well, you are studying creative
writing aren't you. I said yes. He said well, be creative. Do some research. Now back then the
internet had just come on and it wasn't very good. It was good mostly for emails. So
I wasn't able to do research on the internet. So I went to paper research.
Bound volumes in the library of the London Times, a French news magazine and Current Affairs in
American news magazine at the time.
And I was able to get some leads. Got some pretty good
accounts of the fighting. But I wasn't able to find any official records. And that required
a lot of research in libraries and archives and individual historians I had met. And little by
little I put the story together. And in the last two years I was lucky to finally acquire copies
of official cheka reports, investigations into the shooting of Lenin and that was a big, big help.
>> >>: You were also working on the Cohen story
around the same time. Must have been very, very busy on those fronts.
>> >>: I was. Actually I started research on both of them about the same
time. But I was able to finish the book on the Cohens first because I was able to get a copy of
their complete FBI file. I think it was 300 pages long. And page after page after page
they had the names and addresses of people who had informed on them. A lot of information. So I was
able to contact people and track down information using the FBI file. So I really got off to a
good start on Operation Whisper. I finished it first. And then finished up the Lenin Plot.
>> >>: Now the Lenin Plot certainly fascinating book. And so much we could talk about. But
let's focus on the United States first. The likes of Harper, Crane and the key man, I don't
know how you pronounce him Calamatiano. These guys seem to have been in and from and around and studying
in the central states of the United States. Is there anything significant about that.
>> >>: I call them the Chicago group. Samuel M Harper, the son of Dr. William Harper
the first President of University of Chicago. Charles Richard Crane. A friend of
Dr. Harper. And Ambassador Robert McCormick was from Chicago and and ...Calimantiano was at the University of Chicago. He was a classmate of Sam Harper's. They graduated together.The nucleus of the original nonmilitary spying in Russia. They were what the CIA calls
casuals. American citizens who were able to travel and gather information and report back to the US
but were not official spies or paid informants. They paid their own way. Called casuals.
>> >>: So they were particularly interested in Russia. That fascinates me. I once heard an
American, an English professor of Russian studies in the UK saying of all his teachings the students
who understood Russian literature best were students from the Midwestern states the United
States. The reason being it was in the middle of a great land locked country. And they understood
the literature of Russia. So I wondered if there was a link there to these guys in Chicago.
>> >>: Chicago, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota have always been a magnet for immigrants
from Germany, Austria, Poland, the eastern European countries . A lot of people
grew up speaking their home language and learned English later on. During World War I
the Chicago Tribune came under a lot of criticism for their supports for the Germans in the war.
>> >>: A huge amount as I say a lot of things here as you might expect. You talk about the Polar
Bear Association. Discovered very early on in your studies. This old guy you met must
have mentioned them. What exactly was the Polar Bear Association.
>> >>: The Polar Bear Association is located in Michigan, it's a big memorial and library and archives
for the Polar Bears, polar bears were the the doughboys from Michigan and Wisconsin who went to
Russia to fight the Red Army. At that time they didn't have that much, but their collections
have grown immensely since then. They lent me some article and academic journals. But now they
have photographs and letters and diaries and all sorts of things. A good research institution.
>> >>: We are getting ahead of ourselves. How did it all begin. It began because in the first
world war, there was a revolution in Russia and one of the things the Russians wanted to do
was pull out of the war. It was killing thousands upon thousands of Russians. It was not popular.
Wanted to get out of the war. But the western allies, the French the British and the Americans were
concerned that the Germans would then be free could exploit politically, commercially,
and economically Russia, so they had to take some sort of action. Can you give us a bit of a
background of how that concern to start a Lenin plot to get rid of Lenin came about.
>> >>: Well, the Russian revolution, the second Russian revolution occurred in February 1917. The
czar was forced to abdicate in a military coup by his generals and the government was taken
over by the Russian provisional government. They were under pressure from the western
allies to stay in the war. Because if Russia pulled out of the war that would allow German divisions to move
from east to west to western front which was the main battle ground of the war. The first
concern was military. The problem was, as you say, the war was very unpopular
in Russia. A they had lost millions. In those days, those big battles on the eastern
front, the casualties were not hundreds or thousands. The casualties were millions, millions
of soldiers. There was a lot of war fatigue in Russia. So Karinski was head of the provisional government and wanted to
stay on the war at the side of the allies. At the same time, a shadow government was formed by
Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Called the Petrograd Soviet. Lenin had cut a deal with Germany. Germany provided
Lenin and Bolsheviks millions of German marks to in attempt to raise a military
coup and get Russia out of the war. That was a pay back. Lenin was going to get
Russia out of the war to pay back the money that he had received from Germany. So in October 17,
October 1917 the Bolsheviks seized the government. Now they call it the Bolsheviks revolution, or
the great October revolution, or the great October socialist revolution and all that. But it wasn't
a true revolution. A true revolution is a general uprising of the population. As Trotsky said, the seizure of the government by Lenin and the Bolsheviks was a small effort by a few hundred red guards. It was a military coup. Trotsky also
used the word Putsch. Which is German for coup-de-tat. Lenin announced immediately he was going to take
Russia out of the war and that alarmed the allies. And they decided they've got to get rid of Lenin.
>> >>: To start with, they did as a form of espionage. British spies and the United
States spies. And this is where Calimatiano comes in because he is already over there as working
in business. So how did those, I guess espionage plots or beginning of the Lenin plot happen?
>> >>: Well, it began in 1917, late 1917. Secretary of State Robert Lansing used his office as a bully pulpit
to demand that something be done about the Bolsheviks. They were murdering thousands of their
own people. So there was a humanitarian element besides the military element. He arranged
for consul at that time Dewit Clinton Pool in Moscow to travel down to the dawn
Cossack country and interview Cossack generals on the possibility of conducting a coup against the Bolsheviks. Well,
it didn't work. They were too confused and jealous of one another, a lot of animosity. That was the early phase
of the Lenin plot. And the early plan was for United States to send war aid to France and
Britain and they would launder the money to finance the Cossack coup. Giving
money to the Cossacks was illegal because they were not an established government. President
Wilson, said, this has, quote this has my entire approval. So the original plot was Lansing, Wilson and Pool. Calimantiano was in Russia at that time. He was a Russian-American. A graduate of Indiana and University of Chicago. A Russian
American businessman working for the Moscow Trade Association selling farm implements from
the Case Corporation in Wisconsin. But after the Germans blockaded Russia, he was unable to sell
many more farm machinery. He had to get a job. He had a new wife and son. He had been working as a casual for the state
department for some time. So in January of 1918 DeWitt Clinton Pool hired him, Calimantiano, as a translator.
And from there as is things got worse under the Bolsheviks Pool assigned him to organize a network of spies.
These are mostly Russians and Latvians. They reported to Calamontiano, he reported to
Pool. Pool reported to the French and British and to American Ambassador David Francis.
It was a fairly large extensive plot. >> >>: I have got my eye on
the clock here as well Barnes. It's a fascinating book. It's a corking read.
So much detail and so dramatic and exciting. When I was reading it it had a feel of
contemporariness about it. It felt topical. I think that's partly to do with your being a journalist. It almost
reads like current investigative journalism. Can you say a little bit about the writing of it and
what you felt you brought to the telling of not only this story, but this range of stories.
>> >>: Well, initially I was going to write a biography of Calimontiano and Dewitt Clinton
Pool. And that is what I did. But as my research progressed, I found all sorts of interesting things
that had been covered up over the years. And at that point it became an investigative
project. You are correct there. Early on I showed a sample chapter of the book
to an editor at Random House. He was one of the top editors. He said he liked the idea. He said
I should write it using a journalistic style. He said don't write it in an academic style. And
don't write it in an old 19 century Russian style. Nobody will read it. He said use a contemporary
style using contemporary language. Which I did. And I also employed literary techniques such as
a sense of time and place and mood and tone. But the important thing is he said you are going
to write narrative history. Teddy Roosevelt was one of the pioneers in narrative history
and Shelby Foote I think was the gold standard. He wrote the two volume set for the American Civil War. In
narrative history you don't just tell facts and figures like the phone book. The phone book can be
very informative, but it's not very interesting. So in narrative history you tell a story.
You create scenes. You have your characters. And their dialogue. It's told as a story. And you
employ methods of curiosity. What happened next. >> >>: Well, I have to say it really
worked. >> >>: Well, thanks.
>> >>: Now well the book works, but actually
the plot didn't work. It was a disaster. And really something I
guess most the British and Americans hang their heads in shame about. Could you say
a little bit about it is before the western troops arrive how the plot began to fall apart.
>> >>: Well, it was on shaky ground from the very beginning. I am not going to go into too
much. Save something for the reader. But the spies Clinton Pool seemed fairly competent. Calimontiano makes some serious trade craft errors. One of which
was carrying his code book and list of agents inside his walking cane which the Cheka got ahold
of. Also some of the other spies like Sydney Riley. Sydney Riley was one of the very strange
characters in this story. Sydney was a Russian adventurer.
He went to Russia for the SIS. The secret
service. But he immediately started making trade craft errors. He arrived in Russia and was arrested
and he had, and they found a coded message under a cork in is aspirin bottle. He also
made the mistake of leaving his name and address on his calling card when he went to see an allied agent in Petrograd. The Cheka was all over him. And they are all over Bruce Lockhart. He was a special representative of the foreign office.
His assignment was to go over and take a look at what was going on and report back to London. But
in time in late summer he got involved in the plot against Lenin. He made mistakes too. One point
he gave a signed letter of transit to Latvian agent who was going to plan to travel to the north
to Arc Angel to give information to the allies. Well, the Latvian was a double agent for the
Cheka. So he immediately went back to Moscow gave this letter to Rezinsky and Jacob Peters the Cheka chiefs.. So
they were onto Lockhart pretty early too. >> >>: It was error after error.
>> >>:
One thing after another.
>> >>: Yeah. And on the British side Sydney
Riley and Bruce Lockhart’s son wrote a book, which actually when came a TV series in the
United Kingdom. He wasn't an ace spy. He was a con man. And they all made really unfortunate friendships,
let alone try to find agents. But anyway, again looking at the time here. Eventually became
Polar Bears, it became a shooting war. The Brits and the Americans and the Italians and the French
landed troops mainly through Arc Angel and in the north. Again, another catalog of errors.
>> >>: Yes. From the very beginning the invasion force was too small to do anything effective.
But Versailles allied headquarters wanted Murmansk and Arc Angel seized to protect allied stores there from
the Germans who were next door in Finland. Most of the enlisted men were French and American.
Most of the officers were British. Well, as soon as the American and French soldiers arrived
in north Russia, they immediately found out the British wanted to fight an all-out war against
the red army in opposition to Wilson's orders. So the British officers early on were very
antagonistic towards the Americans and French. The British officers were rejects, mental and physical
rejects from the western front. Called crocks. They arrived with 40 thousand cases of scotch
whiskey and drank their way through the invasion and their incompetence caused many battlefield deaths.
And Wilson heard about this and got on line to the British Prime Minister and said we have to do something. He
said it's already been done. So the British commander was sacked and replaced by
general Edmond Ironside. A decorated veteran on the western front. He was very popular with the
soldiers. He rode out to the various fronts with warm clothing, food, medical supplies. Talked
to the men as if they were all comrades. Gave them rest leaves. He really saved the invasion force
from being totally annihilated by the red army. >> >>: As a Brit I felt quite ashamed at various points seeing
how the British Army behaved at that point , you know, holding onto supplies of food, medical supplies.
Also I wonder, of course the United States troops coming from, is it the Custer Academy.
Quite young and fresh. British were exhausted and these officers, you are
absolutely right, were rejected from fighting on the western front.
>> >>: Yes. That was another point of contention.
The British officers didn't want to be there. They wanted to be in England
where it was warm. And they saw the Russian invasion as a side show. That was one point of
resentment.
Also they didn't like the British and French soldiers. These were young
men, fresh, energetic ready to go. And the officers just didn't want to deal with that.
>> >>: You can see in your book the beginnings of the end of the British empire
the British world power beginning to weaken. Let's talk about the United States
because you mention Dewit Pool. He was dealt a bad hand. Wasn't much he could do. But I was fascinated
when he was called before congressional committee he sounded almost like last week.
>> >>: His testimony before Congress was very reminiscent what we hear year after year
from intelligence officials called to congress. They don't know anything, they didn't
see anything, they didn't hear anything. Totally innocent. One lie after another.
>> >>: And the other thing I see in the book is the beginnings of the 20th century United
States intelligence services. How do you see the development of the FBI and the CIA
growing out of the mistakes from that period. >> >>: Well, at that time we didn't have
an FBI or CIA or NSA. Most intelligence was naval intelligence, army intelligence
and state department intelligence. But they weren't that efficient. The state department had a habit of sending in reports on the model of light bulbs used in Italian ships. So Lansing created the Bureau of Secret
Intelligence BSI. Off the books, off the grid private agency. No congressional oversight, no
money from Congress. All reports coming in from the state department from Calimontiano, Pool and Francis
they went to the BSI. The BSI decoded and deciphered them and wrote reports for Lansing and
Wilson. A true beginning of modern intelligence service. The FBI was based on
the Bureau of Intelligence, an investigative agency. They didn't have
the power of arrest. They had to get local police officials to make arrests. But after
this starting in 1920s there was a rise of socialism and communism and anarchism in western nations
and that really prompted the western nations to clean up their intelligence and
counterintelligence programs and get on with it. >> >>: And also interestingly a lot of the young
diplomats who feel like cut their teeth in this crisis of 1918. Actually emerge again as older
and more mature diplomats. When FDR comes to power and they become his ambassadors and consuls in Russia.
>> >>: Right. One of those was William Bullet, assistant to secretary of state Lansing. He was pro-Bolshevik. And
he went over and made some reports to Lansing which were very pro-soviet. And the press
called him a quote, red over easy, end quote. And his reports were finally rejected by
the state department and he quit in protest. Now FDR appointed him ambassador to
Russia in the 1930s. But to William, to Bullet’s benefit he later wised up
became a very ardent anticommunist. Pool himself became an officer with the OSS
during World War II. He was in charge of aliens, kind of an alien investigative
agency at the OSS. He went to meetings of aliens, legal aliens in the United
States try to pick up information. >> >>: Now that is absolutely,
hang on. Messages on the screen. Why were they called the white Russians?
>> >>: I don't call them the white Russians because white Russian suggests they
were monarchists. And most of these people, these Cossack generals and officers and
men who had served in the imperial army had no intention of going back to Czarism. They wanted
either a constitutional monarchy like Britain, a pure parliamentary democracy like France or
a federalist system like the United States. The term white Russian there's several
explanations. The one I like is that during the French revolution the monarch,
the monarchy had a white flag with gold fleur-de-leigh on it. And the revolutionaries had a red flag. Lenin picked up the red flag as a symbol of the Bolsheviks And people started calling the anti-Bolsheviks- whites. But they weren't really monarchist. There were some, I'm sure, but most were not.
>> >>: And also there were lots of different groupings. What staggers me about this story is the socialist revolutionists
who in many ways were more violent and ambitious than the Cheka and the Bolsheviks.
>> >>: The socialist revolutionaries were the largest revolutionary party in Russia. Many, many times larger than the Bolsheviks. The SRs are the Bolsheviks main enemy followed by the anarchists and the Cossacks. The SRs believed in
individual assassinations. They didn't believe in taking over by mass revolution. Mass revolutions
cause thousands and millions of deaths. Their strategy was to assassinate certain high
government officials at certain points in history. Thereby setting off a coup. Much more violent.
>> >>: Yeah. Of course the Cheka, the NKBD, the KGB survived, arguably survives to this very day.
>> >>: That's right. The Cheka is very much admired by Putin after the fall of communism in
Russia. The big statute of Durshenzy was removed. But Putin quietly returned
the statute to headquarters. >> >>: Everything is linked.
>> >>:
It goes around and around.
>> >>: Back to the United States again. The
role of Woodrow Wilson, he was a sick man towards the end of this. Yet he was a peacemaker.
Yet involved in this really very underhand war. What is your, what do you think is
the reputation of Wilson that remains now? >> >>: Well, a lot of disagreement over
Wilson's legacy. He is remembered for his promoting the league of nations.
>> >>: Yes. >> >>: He is remembered for
getting us through World War I. But Wilson was a passivist when he went in. His
second term he ran as I will keep us out of war. And that's a criticism that he allowed himself to
be drawn into a European war. European wars were not very popular in America at that time,
most Americans figured that is their problem, let them deal with it. So I like Wilson. I
think his legacy holds up over the years. He made a lot of mistakes, but all Presidents do.
>> >>: I see his health is being the issue there. day. work
>> >>: Oh, yeah. He had high blood pressure. >>
>>: Strokes.
>> >>: Strokes. He had, he couldn't work all day.
He would work a few hours and rest, then a few hours and rest. He was a sick man.
>> >>: And of course most of the other leaders who working with him in Versailles weren't as fully aware of that
as we are now historically. Seems to be the big mistake of Versailles was reparations against Germany because
that effectively led to the Second World War. >> >>: Exactly. The reparations were I think unreasonable. >> >>: Yeah.
>> >>: And that accounted for the rise of Hitler. He wanted to restore the German pride
and Mussolini and World War II in affect was just a continuation of World War I.
>> >>: Two other things. One is wars always end in a mess. But the argument that runs through
your book, and not everyone would accept this, you effectively say the cold war begins in 1918.
>> >>: Exactly.
>> >>: In 1945.
>> >>: Exactly. If you can define a cold war as an attempt by one country or countries working
against one another to defeat one another militarily, politically, economically, culturally without a
formal declaration of war then it began in 1917 with our undeclared war against Russia. The Russians have
never, never forgotten that. They still teach that in intelligence schools that the west is out to destroy the Russian state.
And to me that was the true beginning of the cold war. There was a respite during World War II when we fought with
the Russians against the axis powers, but that was just a situation of strange bed fellows.
>> >>: My enemy's enemy is my friend. >> >>: The spying has been going on
between Russia and the United States since 1917. It hasn't stopped. The cold war did
not end. A Russian retired, Russia KGB officer told me it hasn't ended, it has just changed forms.
Now computer surveillance, hacking, fake news, fake intelligence reports. Just changed the form.
>> >>: Right. We need to pull things together now. It's been an absolute delight to talk to you.
Utterly fascinated about both of your books Operation Whisper and the Lenin Plot. What's next?
>> >>: Thank you for helping me with Operation Whisper. Your information on the
control officers in New York was invaluable. >> >>: But come on, what next. Is there
another book coming from Barnes Carr. >> >>: I have written two novels which my agent
has in London he is circulating. One is called Appointment in Moscow. Spy novel set in
revolutionary Russia. The other one is more contemporary. Set in Washington, involves
the newly elected President of the United States poisoning her husband on inaugural night in order
to cover up a dirty trick of hers that resulted in the death of her primary opponent in the
campaign. Called Potomac Fever. Old timers in Washington will know what that means.
>> >>: I really look forward to reading those Barnes. And also reading your book given me
some ideas as to what I may go on to next. I am a biographer and some of those stories need to be
told. All stories need to be told. You were about to say.
>> >>: There are all sorts of characters involved on Lenin plot from all these nations who would
be worthy of biographies or nonfiction books. The French angle has not been exploited that well
in the west in England and the United States. That would be a good place to start in France.
>> >>: Let’s hope we can start traveling again soon.
>> >>: I hope so. I appreciate your helping me out on this and on
the book and on today's show. And my thanks to Doug Swanson at the National Archives. And all the
people at the National Archives who helped me in this book. I have a list. They were in the
acknowledgment section of the book. They were very, very patient with me and very, very helpful.
>> >>: Here, here.
>> >>: Thank you, Vin. >>
>>: Thank you.
>> >>: And Doug.
