Elizabeth Bentley

Elizabeth Bentley
Elizabeth Bentley in 1948
Allegiance	Soviet Union (defected) United States
Service	Communist Party of the United States (defected) FBI
Codename(s)	Gregory
Birth name	Elizabeth Terrill Bentley
Born	(1908-01-01)January 1, 1908 New Milford, Connecticut
Died	December 3, 1963(1963-12-03) (aged 55) Grace-New Haven Hospital New Haven, Connecticut
Cause of death	Cancer
Nationality	American
Parents	Charles Prentiss Bentley May Charlotte Turrill
Occupation	Teacher, Spy
Alma mater	Vassar College (1926–1930) Columbia University (1933) University of Florence

Elizabeth Terrill Bentley (January 1, 1908 – December 3, 1963) was an American spy for the Soviet Union from 1938 until 1945. In 1945 she defected from the Communist Party and Soviet intelligence and later (1952) became an informer for the U.S. She exposed two networks of spies, ultimately naming over 80 Americans who had engaged in espionage for the Soviets. When her testimony became public in 1948, it became a media sensation and had a major impact on Soviet espionage cases of the 1950s.

Bentley provided no documentary evidence to support her claims and the accuracy of her allegations was long disputed. The declassification of both Soviet documents and the U.S. codebreaking Venona project have lent some credence to the basis of Bentley's allegations, but the claims remain controversial due to questions about the accuracy of translations and vague nature of the exact identities of those with code names in Venona (along with several dubious claims made in the years following her defection to the United States).

Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was born in New Milford, Connecticut to Charles Prentiss Bentley, a dry-goods merchant, and May Charlotte Turrill, a schoolteacher. In 1915 her parents had moved to Ithaca, New York, and by 1920 the family had moved to McKeesport, Pennsylvania and then to Rochester, New York. Her parents were described as strait-laced old family Episcopalian New Englanders.

She attended Vassar College, graduating in 1930 with a degree in English, Italian, and French. In 1933, while she was attending graduate school at Columbia University, she won a fellowship to the University of Florence. While in Italy, she briefly joined a local student Fascist group, the Gruppo Universitario Fascista. Under the influence of her anti-Fascist faculty advisor Mario Casella, with whom she had an affair, she soon moved to another part of the political spectrum, however. While completing her master's degree at Columbia University, she attended meetings of the American League Against War and Fascism. Although she would later state that she found Communist literature unreadable and "dry as dust," she was attracted by the sense of community and social conscience she found with her friends in the league. When she learned that most of them were members of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), she joined the party herself in March 1935.