Albert E. Kahn

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Albert Eugene Kahn (1912-1979) was an American journalist, and nephew of modernist industrial architect Albert Kahn. He is best known for his joint works with Michael Sayers, Sabotage! The Secret War Against America (1942), The Plot Against The Peace (1945) and especially The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War Against Soviet Russia (1946), an international bestseller. He was a self-proclaimed "radical in the tradition of Jack London" and outspoken critic of the government in the 1950s McCarthy era. As a tenacious critic of government deceptions, Kahn refused to give in to blacklisting. "As far as I was concerned, I was acting in the American tradition of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine and the framers of the constitution," Kahn said in an interview shortly before his death. "The idea of any government telling me that I owe unequivocal allegiance to it is the most repugnant thing on earth."

[edit] Spy?

He was a journalist and secret member of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) during World War II. In 1946 the San Francisco KGB suggested that Kahn be recruited into Soviet espionage. Kahn requested that Julia Older, who worked in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), obtain information. Elizabeth Bentley stated in her deposition to the FBI that Kahn had furnished information directly to Jacob Golos and herself in 1942 on immigrant Ukrainians hostile to the Soviet Union. Venona project researchers John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr speculate Kahn may be code name "Fighter", as referenced in Venona decypt # 247 San Francisco to Moscow, 14 June 1946. He was also an opponent of McCarthyism. See his works: High Treason: The Plot Against the People (1950) Agents of Peace (1951), The Game of Death: Effects of the Cold War on Our Children (1953), McCarthy on Trial (1954).

[edit] References

Elizabeth Bentley deposition 30 November 1945, FBI file 65-14603. Also see Venona 247 KGB San Francisco to Moscow, 14 June 1946, for an ambiguous mention of Kahn in the clear.
NSA official VENONA site
John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Yale University Press (1999).
[1]
http://www.maebrussell.com/Sabotage/Sabotage%20ch%205.html]
[2]
[3]
Mary Arbunich, "Touching Image of Inspiration that Stirred Eichler's Soul