Last week, Yale University Press published Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, a book based on notes taken by Russian journalist Alexander Vassiliev while he had access to Stalin era archives in Moscow.  In the book, it’s revealed that Ernest Hemingway was on the list of the KGB’s operatives in America.

Hemingway was allegedly recruited in 1941 while on  a trip to China, was code named “Argo,” and “repeatedly expressed his desire and willingness to help us” by meeting up with soviet agents in Havana and London.  The late 40’s meetings however, failed to produce anything substantive that the Russians could use, and the book claims the author failed to “give us any political information.”

Hemingway helped the US government during WWII by patrolling Cuban waters in his private fishing boat, an activity during which he made several coded notes, and one enemy sighting. 

Given his desire to work for the Americans, and his inability to deliver anything of use to the red manace, there is speculation that Hemingway’s KGB efforts were more about adventure (or material for a novel) than ideology.

- Robert Laurie