Anne Applebaum does a fine job at pointing out the disingenuousness of Victor Navasky's letter. The man simply can't bring himself to admit the extent of American spying for the Soviets--and both the moral and political implications of that crime. Is that pathological?

To the Editor:

Although I could have done without the "pathological," believe it or not, a part of me is glad that, in her review of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Anne Applebaum refers to "Navasky's pathological inability to believe that there really were Soviet spies in America." The reason: It gives me a second shot at correcting an egregious New Republicerror.

Conceding that the Rosenbergs “shouldn’t have done what they did” and that they “thought they were helping our ally in wartime” hardly amounts to a full recognition of their crimes. Remember, the Rosenbergs knowingly gave atomic technology to Stalin--technology that was used to keep half of Europe under brutal occupation for half a century, and helped fuel a costly and wasteful arms race, and helped a stupid and vicious communist dictatorship stay in power, too.

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Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America

By John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev

(Yale University Press, 637 pp., $35)