The NKVD, predecessor of the KGB, knew that a war with the United States would divert Japan from its ambitions in Mongolia and Siberia—threats that tied up 25% of the Red Army—and allow Russia to deploy its full military power against the Germans. Fortunately for Stalin, his intelligence service had an “agent of influence” in Washington perfectly situated to provoke a U.S.-Japanese war—Harry Dexter White (see the photo on the left), a high-ranking Treasury official. Skillfully manipulating his boss, Henry Morgenthal Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, and Stanley Hornbeck, the State Department’s expert on Asia, who hated the Japanese and believed that Asians were naturally timid and easily bluffed, White … Continue reading John Koster