Mark Bradley decided to take on a difficult task. The story of Duncan Lee is not one that most authors would want to tackle, since the subject of the work could be easily characterized as an unrepentant traitor for communist Russia under Stalin.
Lee would dispute this, and so would Lee’s family. Probably, the rationale Lee would offer, as per the framework of the book, was that the goal was to defeat Hitler at any cost. Lee saw Stalin and Russia as key to this. This, however, of course overlooks the fact that Lee was a communist because he liked the ideology of communism.
The way Bradley tells the narrative makes chronological sense. The basic divisions are the early life of Lee, pre-war, the college life of Lee, where he begins his communist journey, the war life of Lee, where he becomes an OSS officer but also a supplier of information to Russia, and the fallout later life of Lee, where the consequences under McCarthy begin to corner Lee.
The most interesting part of the story concerns how Lee deceived himself. He starts off clearly as a Russian spy, but then later after the charges begin to be made concerning his activities, he reverses his role and goes to China to support an airline industry with strong opponents of communism. His job, with this specific airline, is to resist the advancing Mao in China.
So, the question becomes who, exactly, is Duncan Lee? His family had been in America for some time, and was related to Robert E. Lee. His immediate family, in the form of his father, was an evangelical who went to China to witness for the gospel there. Bradley juxtaposes this action against Lee who inherits this spiritual zeal, but uses it for the “religious” purposes of communism and advancing its goals.
Being part of the intellectual class, Lee heads off to Oxford and finds a future wife there who is more radical for communism than Lee. This serves to galvanize his early devotion.
Later, during the war, the emergent OSS under Donovan taps on Lee to hold an important position inside the organization. Since Lee has been rubbing shoulders with members of CPUSA–the Communist Party of the USA–it does not take long for Russian intelligence to find a suitable handler for him in the form of Mary Price who believes spying for Russia is a form of fighting fascism. The way she recruits Lee is possibly one of the oldest in the book–through sexual seduction in part. Lee refuses to give Price any written information, however, and makes her memorize what he has to say so that there is no paper trail. This proves to be a later boon to Lee.
Lee is not a very good spy for Russia since he refuses to do what they want him to do and he continues to do things his own way. He also does not have the required emotional stamina, and soon begins to have a kind of fearful paranoia run his life. Since his treachery level was so high, one concludes this is probably Lee’s guilty conscience more than any external threat, although the two do blend together on several occasions.
Once Russia aligns as an ally of the US, Stalin uses the new scenario to his advantage since he knows the US does not want to try any specific Soviet spies it might find in its ranks due to upsetting Russia and having a situation unfold whereby Russia might withhold some of its manpower from the war effort. It is, ironically, at this point, that Lee begins to become more paranoid since two sides which were not originally speaking to one another begin to have more communication and understanding of who is supporting whom in the spy world.
When the war finally ends, Lee, through the machinations of the person who replaces Mary Price, an Elizabeth Bentley, faces whistle-blowing charges. Bentley begins to not like the direction communism is taking for a variety of reasons, and for her own protection from Russia decides to venture to the FBI and unmask her network of Russian spies. The FBI of course, does not initially trust or believe her fully, but it puts enough pressure on Lee to make him wary. It is not long after this that he is off to China to assist the airline that the CIA saves which is called CAT in its pro Chiang Kai-shek activities which includes supplying his army and ultimately his ex-filtration to Taiwan. This provides Lee an entirely different narrative, which he uses in the coming trials which are in part a result from Bentley’s admissions–performed by the House Un-American Committee.
Eventually, Lee is off to Bermuda for his new job with an insurance company, where he faces more trouble in the form of gaining necessary passports and being summoned back to the US to face further questioning because of Bentley.
Here, the narrative plays out to its ultimate conclusion of Lee as an older man, and what he, in his own opinion, thinks about his life. Of course, true to the form of everything else Lee has done in his life, his conclusions are myopic and flawed. The reader is in the best position to make the judgment.
Bradley tries to play this story down the center and uses phraseology that condemns communism at times, and patriotism at other times. He does mention, by the end of the book, that he is a former CIA employee and that the CIA had to read all the material and approve it. Perhaps this plays into the case of Duncan Lee, and perhaps not. Perhaps Bradley, like Lee, felt a need to atone for something, and so wrote this book and worked with the Lee family to produce it. None of this sounds like an easy or delightful task. The story, for whatever reason, had to be told.
The question, like the life of Duncan Lee, is why?
The full review can be read in its original entirety over at thebooklight.