I just finished In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage, by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. This is the fifth book I've read that lists at least one of these men as an author. In other volumes, Klehr and Haynes focus on recently released Cold War documents, such as America's Venona project or the declassified information from Soviet intelligence. In Denial takes a different approach. Rather than a peep into intelligence files, the book is more of an expose of American intellectuals who served as apologists for, or deniers of, the subversive activities of American Communists.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from In Denial:

* The authors quote Herb Aptheker, longtime historian of the CPUSA, as encouraging leftist historians to engage in "intense partisanship." Aptheker conceded that he could not "understand the idea of objectivity," because being objective meant "being part of the Right."

* When the Soviet archives and declassified American decrypts revealed that most Cold War historians were way off the mark, Marxist professors sought to quickly change the subject. "We should recognize the issue of communism and Soviet espionage has become an antiquarian backwater," proclaimed Yeshiva University professor Ellen Schrecker. "After all, the Cold War is over." This coming from an historian (aren't historians primarily interested in events that are "over"?), and one who writes almost exclusively on the Cold War.

* "I was in the grip of a new kind of patriotism," screenwriter Walter Bernstein observed regarding his commitment to Moscow. Should this cause us to rethink Benedict Arnold, Tokyo Rose, Jane Fonda, and other figures who also fell under "the grip of a new kind of patriotism"?

My favorite quote used in the book, however, comes from someone who got things right, historian Robert Conquest. When Conquest's publisher asked the embattled author if he had any suggestions for a new title for his book, The Great Terror, after the Soviet archives had been finally opened to historians, Conquest curtly responded: "How about I Told You So, You F***ing Fools."