How the Cold War Began

Using newly declassified intelligence files and interviews with several of the key players, Amy Knight examines the substance of Gouzenko's revelations and delves into his hidden motives for defecting. She explains how Gouzenko, the RCMP who protected him and interrogated suspects for weeks without laying charges, and Prime Minister Mackenzie King's government were really pawns in a much larger game. And she brilliantly connects these events to the hardening of political relations between Moscow and the capitals of the West, the practice of guilt by association and the end of the movement for international control of the atomic bomb.