True Believer: Stalin’s Last American Spy

Noel Field, once a well-meaning and privileged American, spied for Stalin during the 1930s and '40s. 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 did 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: ten million Americans unemployed, rampant racism, retreat from the world just as fascism was gaining ground, and Washington parched of fresh ideas. Kati Marton captures Field’s riveting quest for a life of meaning that went horribly wrong in her new book True Believer: Stalin’s Last American Spy. Her book is supported by unprecedented access to Field family correspondence and Soviet Secret Police records.

Kati Marton is director and formerly chair of the Committee to Protect Journalists and a board member with New America.  She served on the Human Rights Watch Board for ten years.  She also serves on the board of directors of the International Rescue Committee and Central European University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, P.E.N. International and the Author’s Guild. From 2003 to 2008 Marton chaired the International Women’s Health Coalition, a global leader in promoting and protecting the health and human rights of women and girls. Marton has authored numerous books including her latest True Believer: Stalin’s Last American Spy and contributed as a reporter to ABC News, PBS, NPR, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic among other outlets.

Follow the discussion online using #TrueBeliever and following @NewAmericaISP.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase.

Participant:

Kati Marton @katimarton
Board Member, New America
Author, True Believer: Stalin's Last American Spy

Moderator:

Peter Bergen @peterbergencnn
Director, New America's International Secruity Program