True Believer: Stalin's Last American Spy

by Kati Marton Narrated by Amanda Carlin

Overview

“Kati Marton's True Believer is a true story of intrigue, treachery, murder, torture, fascism, and an unshakable faith in the ideals of Communism....A fresh take on espionage activities from a critical period of history” (Washington Independent Review of Books).

True Believer reveals the life of Noel Field, once a well-meaning and privileged American who spied for Stalin during the 1930s and forties. Later, a pawn in Stalin's sinister master strategy, Field was kidnapped and tortured by the KGB and forced to testify against his own Communist comrades.

How does an Ivy League-educated, US State Department employee, deeply rooted in American culture and history, become a hardcore Stalinist? The 1930s, when Noel Field joined the secret underground of the International Communist Movement, were a time of national collapse. Communism promised the righting of social and political wrongs and many in Field's generation were seduced by its siren song. Few, however, went as far as Noel Field in betraying their own country.

With a reporter's eye for detail, and a historian's grasp of the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century, Kati Marton, in a “relevant...fascinating...vividly reconstructed” (The New York Times Book Review) account, captures Field's riveting quest for a life of meaning that went horribly wrong. True Believer is supported by unprecedented access to Field family correspondence, Soviet Secret Police records, and reporting on key players from Alger Hiss, CIA Director Allen Dulles, and World War II spy master, “Wild Bill” Donovan-to the most sinister of all: Josef Stalin. “Relevant today as a tale of fanaticism and the lengths it can take one to” (Publishers Weekly), True Believer is “riveting reading” (USA TODAY), an astonishing real-life spy thriller, filled with danger, misplaced loyalties, betrayal, treachery, and pure evil, with a plot twist worthy of John le Carré.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Timothy Naftali

It is not the spy stories that make this book so fascinating. It is the account of the bizarre events involving Field and, more poignantly, his family once the Cold War began and waves of paranoia swept both superpowers…[Field] died in 1970 unrepentant, a staunch defender of the cause, acknowledging neither his years of spying nor the suffering his secret life had caused his own family. As vividly reconstructed by Marton, Noel Field's life is a window on the delusion and narcissism that fuel the self-radicalized of any era.

Publishers Weekly

★ 07/11/2016
With thorough research and stylistic verve, Marton (Paris: A Love Story), a veteran journalist and popular historian, relates the tragic tale of Noel Haviland Field (1904–1970), the scion of a well-off Quaker family who attended Harvard, began a successful career at the State Department, and become a spy for the Soviet Union. After recruiting family members to join him in this work, Field fled the U.S. when he was exposed by Whittaker Chambers. He then fell under Soviet suspicion because of his brief work for the OSS (forerunner to the CIA) during WWII and support for some anti-Stalinist communist dissidents. Lured to Prague under false pretenses, Field was arrested by Stalinist agents, tortured, and held in solitary confinement in Budapest for five years. Yet even when freed, Field defended the repressive government that followed the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. In his last years, Field edited an obscure Hungarian literary magazine where he informed on colleagues, remained a loyal apparatchik even after Khrushchev denounced Stalin, and died in obscurity. Marton, whose Hungarian journalist parents scored the only interview Field and his wife ever gave to the Western press, tells Field’s story beautifully, reminding readers of the potential horrors of well-meaning but unquestioning idealism. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM. (Sept.)

Cass R. Sunstein

A riveting account of how fanaticism arises, who's vulnerable to it, and why. A rich portrait of a lost era, with fascinating implications for our own.

Daily Gazette

"Kati Marton richly documents the story of the Swiss-born, Harvard-educated Noel Field....[Marton] builds a detailed narrative with twists and turns galore."

Anne-Marie Slaughter

At a time when violent extremism and fanaticism seem automatically to have an Islamic prefix, True Believer reminds us of equally brutal causes that swept up deluded young men and women, shattered families and destroyed lives. Kati Marton gives us a gripping story with a timely moral.

Joe Weisberg

Noel Field is one of the most fascinating spies produced by the Cold War. He twisted his soul trying to do good in the world. Marton's beautiful storytelling reminds us of the America that spawned traitors. If you can understand Field, you can understand America. A one of a kind book.

Jon Meacham

In this real-life thriller, Kati Marton brings a lost chapter of the Cold War back to vivid life. In telling the story of Noel Field, Marton—a distinguished chronicler of the vicissitudes of the 20th century, particularly in Europe—draws on a cast of characters ranging from Alger Hiss to Josef Stalin. This is a terrific piece of history.

The National Review

"Riveting page-turner

The Weekly Standard

“True Believer is both thorough and engaging.... Every generation has its share of such fanatics, secure in their belief that they are doing good even as they leave chaos and destruction in their wake. This portrait of a monster is an important lesson of what communism wrought.

The Washington Free Beacon

"Fascinating"

Washington Independent Review of Books

A true story of intrigue, treachery, murder, torture, fascism, and an unshakable faith in the ideals of Communism. . . . exciting to read, a fresh take on espionage activities from a critical period of history.

Sean Wilentz

In the name of justice and socialist revolution, Noel Field lost his own humanity. His story is a chilling piece of history but also a timeless moral lesson about how unmoored idealism can abet murderous evil. Kati Marton tells it all powerfully, with sensitivity to the psychology as well as the politics of a ruined life.

Newsday

"Marton, author of Enemies of the People, builds a detailed narrative with twists and turns galore....poignant and almost defies belief."

Guardian US

"Fascinating and stirringly relevant...remarkable."

Journal of Cold War Studies

A wonderfully researched and beautifully told chilling story of how fanaticism arises and how one man and his circle of friends became prisoners to ideology.

The Washington Times

[Noel Field’s] sordid story is grippingly related by Kati Marton, whose parents, Hungarian journalists, covered various show trials that resulted in Field and other “traitors to the cause” being jailed. She also gained access to Field family papers and those of persons brought down with him.

Amanda Foreman

This is more than just a spy story of white hats versus black hats. Kati Marton has written a gripping but nuanced account of the fanaticism and betrayal by one of the most notorious American traitors in Cold War history.

USA Today

"Riveting reading . . . True Believer is a mesmerizing look at Cold War espionage and a chilling reminder of the destructive power of fanaticism."

The New York Times Book Review

"Relevant . . . fascinating . . . As vividly reconstructed by Marton, Noel Field's life is a window on the delusion and narcissism that fuel the self-radicalized of any era."

Jon Meacham

In this real-life thriller, Kati Marton brings a lost chapter of the Cold War back to vivid life. In telling the story of Noel Field, Marton—a distinguished chronicler of the vicissitudes of the 20th century, particularly in Europe—draws on a cast of characters ranging from Alger Hiss to Josef Stalin. This is a terrific piece of history.

USA Today

"Riveting reading . . . True Believer is a mesmerizing look at Cold War espionage and a chilling reminder of the destructive power of fanaticism."

Library Journal

06/01/2016
Noel Field (1904–70) graduated from Harvard University with full honors and a degree in two years, worked for the U.S. State Department's Western European division, and wrote speeches for major politicians. He was also a devout communist. With hindsight, this might seem like an odd mix, but in the 1920s and 1930s, these were realistic options for some in America. Field was soon recognized by Soviet agents, who approached him to work for Joseph Stalin as a spy. Field found this to be his calling. Working with newly unclassified documents from the former Soviet Union, the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the modern Central Intelligence Agency), personal letters, and historical but unpublished interviews with all of the major players, Marton (Enemies of the People) tells the incredible true story of Field's fanaticism with communism and Stalinism. Marton's own parents were the only Western journalists to ever interview Field and his wife, Herta Field. Oddly, Marton's father was also imprisoned in the same cell previously occupied by Field. The conspiracy, subterfuge, and cataclysmic destruction of Field's family and friends are all addressed in this well-researched book. VERDICT Recommended for readers of 20th-century world history, spies, Stalin, and the Cold War. [See Prepub Alert, 3/21/16.]—Jason L. Steagall, Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170566693
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	09/06/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

True Believer
I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.

—Graham Greene

Kafka’s images are alive in Prague because they anticipate totalitarian society.

—Milan Kundera

IN MAY 1949 an American of patrician bearing, with the slight stoop of a tall man, walks the streets of Prague. Though Noel Field appears aimless and unhurried, he is not a tourist. Tourists are scarce in Prague during the second year of Soviet rule, and foreigners, especially Americans, even more rare. Czechs passing Field avoid eye contact with a man so obviously from the enemy camp. They have no way of knowing that this elegant man with the long, aquiline features is a Soviet agent. The American is in Prague because he has nowhere else to go. For two decades he has lived a double life. Noel Field is unaware that his life as a traitor is about to be brutally ended—not by the country he betrayed, the United States, but by the one he serves, the Soviet Union.

As always in his life replete with terrible choices, Field is focused on the rightness of the one he has just made. He has come East to escape an FBI subpoena. Field knows and loves the medieval city on the Vltava River, and tries now to let Prague work its timeless magic on his agitated spirit. On the surface, the quiet streets below the immense Hradcany castle seem unchanged. Prague had been spared the bombing that destroyed so many other ancient European cities during the recent world war. Though the great Baroque and Gothic monuments stand undisturbed, Prague’s spirit has been snuffed out. An eerie stillness hangs over the town; people in the streets do their business, then hurry home. No carefree laughter wafts from the cafés off Wenceslas Square to break the quiet. This is not the old Prague. Noel Field, however, has the gift of seeing only what he chooses to see.

As the days pass, Field pays ever less attention to the statues of Baroque saints lined up like sentries on either side of the Charles Bridge. The prematurely gray-haired American shambles unseeing among these architectural wonders. Daily he passes 22 Golden Lane, Franz Kafka’s house in the Old Town. Out of habit, he still pauses before the Gothic tower of the Old Town Hall, but he is no longer mesmerized by the hourly appearance of Death clanging its bell to mark the time.

How strange that so many friends—comrades from the Spanish Civil War and the Communist International, whom he had helped in so many ways—were too busy, or out of town. Yet they had encouraged Field to come to Prague, held out the prospect of a teaching job at the famed Charles University. When he hears nothing more about the job offer that lured him here, does he have a premonition? Some sense that he is about to embark on his own Kafkaesque journey? Did the seasoned spy realize that his every step in the Old Town is shadowed?

The American’s bland, expressionless features do not quite mask his anxiety. Secrecy—from even friends and family—was hardwired into Field. Recently, Field’s secret exploded in articles in his own country’s front pages. Whittaker Chambers, a confessed Soviet spy, named Noel Field in his Senate testimony about Communists in the highest reaches of the US government. Chambers shattered Field’s meticulously compartmentalized life. The New York Times revealed still more details in its coverage of the trial of Noel’s friend and fellow Soviet agent Alger Hiss. With dread mounting, Noel had read those accounts in his home in Geneva. He admired his friend Alger’s smooth deception under oath, but knew he was incapable of such a performance. One step ahead of an FBI subpoena, Noel fled to the presumed safety of Prague.

Field could not know that the Kremlin had chosen him for a key role in the upcoming purge of Stalin’s would-be enemies. The fact that Field was Stalin’s loyal foot soldier was irrelevant. Noel Field, who knew all those targeted by Stalin for liquidation—and was a citizen of the new enemy—would make the perfect witness against them. Starting in 1949, the paranoid Soviet leader prescribed a fresh wave of terror and show trials, with Noel Field—his faithful acolyte—at their center.

Field’s idle stroll through the ancient city would be his last as a free man for many years.

He had served his masters with unflinching loyalty. In the thirties, as a State Department official and later at the League of Nations, and, recently, as head of an American humanitarian relief agency, Field’s loyalty to Moscow never wavered. For a long time, his earnest air of a wide-eyed idealist put most people off the scent.

Five aimless days after checking into the gloomy, tattered splendor of the Palace Hotel near Wenceslas Square, Field got the call he was waiting for. Someone was ready to talk to him about his future. On May 12, 1949, Noel strode calmly through the Palace’s revolving doors and did not reappear for six years. He would never see his own country again.

Minutes after leaving the Palace Hotel, rough hands clapped a chloroform-soaked rag on the American’s face. When, several hours later, Field regained consciousness, he was handcuffed and blindfolded, his head covered by a sack. At the Czech-Hungarian border town of Bratislava, Czech secret police agents turned him over to his new captors. All Field knew was that he was in the hands of people who spoke a language he did not understand. Noel Field’s life as prisoner of the AVO—the Hungarian secret police—had begun. The stage manager of the Hungarians’ every brutal step, however, was the man Field most revered: Josef Stalin. A decade and a half after his conversion to Communism, Field had become Stalin’s latest victim.



This is the astonishing tale of an American’s journey from pacifist idealist to hard-core Stalinist. The stage, however, is much wider. In the late twenties and early thirties, a disillusioned generation despaired at America’s ability to solve its own problems. Before FDR’s transformative, optimistic activism, the country was on its knees. In the 1930s America stood for hunger, unemployment, broken promises, and smashed hopes. With ten million Americans out of work, it was a failed state. Capitalism—indeed, democracy—seemed to have run out of new ideas. The national mood was sour and self-absorbed. The 1927 executions of Italian immigrants Nicolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti revealed corrosive social injustice at the nation’s heart.

A continent away, fascism was surging. Many wondered if the American system was even worth saving. Appalled by the injustices, thirsting to make a difference, they were drawn to a radical ideology that left no room for doubt or skepticism. Communism shone bright in the aftermath of the successful Russian Revolution. Its dogma offered answers to social, political, and personal problems, and promised a radiant future for humanity. To echo Abraham Lincoln’s words, it appeared to many of Field’s generation as “the last best hope of earth.”

It was more than the Depression, and more than Washington’s passivity in the face of fascism that fueled Field’s alienation and led him to work actively for the overthrow of his own government. His was a quest for a life of meaning that went horribly wrong. Such was Communism’s power over him that not even Moscow’s admission that Field’s hero, Stalin, himself betrayed the dream shook his faith.

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