The First Counterspy: Larry Haas, Bell Aircraft, and the FBI's Attempt to Capture a Soviet Mole

by Kay Haas, Walter W. Pickut

Overview

The First Counterspyis the pulse-quickening and traumatic story of spy, counterspy, and an American family unwittingly caught in its web. Until this case, the FBI had never recruited civilian counterspies to catch a Soviet agent. The first two were Larry Haas, a leading aviation engineer at Bell Aviation, and Leona Franey, head librarian at Bell’s technical library. The FBI pitted them against a Soviet agent, Andrei Ivanovich Schevchenko, operating legally as one of the highest Soviet officials in the United States during WWII, and illegally as the secret head of a wide-ranging spy network hidden within the American aviation industry.

The First Counterspylays out this exciting story and, later, the consequences of Schevchenko’s deadly threat of vengeance against Haas, the counterspy who betrayed him. The threat was uttered in a mere fourteen seconds but generated lethal consequences that long outlived Schevchenko, tormented Larry Haas, killed his wife, and subjected his daughter, Kay (the co-author of this book), to decades of nearly fatal harassment.

And thereby hangs a tale of spy vs. spy intrigue against the backdrop of the home front during World War II.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493061563
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	05/01/2022
Pages:	392
Sales rank:	1,044,639
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Kay Haas is Larry Haas’s elder daughter. Her early years were fraught with disruptions caused by her father’s work and her mother’s death at the hands of Soviet agents. Kay later traveled widely and became a renowned and commercially successful stained-glass artist creating entire suites of church windows, elegant chandeliers, and decorative and artistic displays. She has raised five children over a span of twenty-five years, and at the age of 80 is married to her third husband, a retired pastor. She now lives in a secluded, forest village in rural New York State.

Walter Pickut is a freelance writer and the founding editor (now contributing editor) of the Jamestown Gazette, a Western New York and Northwest Pennsylvania regional weekly newspaper, now entering its tenth year of publication. He lives in Chautauqua County, New York, where he serves at the Martz-Kohl Astronomical Observatory to help fulfill their mission of research and public education about astronomy and space travel.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part I Seduction and Betrayal

1 Two New Arrivals 9

2 One Big Lie 19

3 First Meeting 25

4 An Invisible Network 29

5 The Long Seduction 33

6 Seducing Leona 37

7 Everybody's Enemy 43

8 A Man to Be Dealt With 45

9 First Date 63

10 Rethinking Flying 73

11 Second Date 77

12 Third Date and Goodbye 89

13 Birth of a Counterspy 93

14 Moving There 109

15 A First Collaboration 113

16 The World Changes Again 123

17 New Priorities 127

18 Trying Again 131

19 A New Beginning 133

20 Into the Spider's Lair 135

21 Final Doubts 145

22 Losing His Grip 153

23 Reacting Matter to Die For 155

24 A Profitable Vacation 169

25 Spy Craft in Execution 173

26 Invisibility, Bombs, and Victors 179

27 The All-Important If 191

28 The Wrong Ride to School 195

29 Accusations and Renewed Alliance 199

30 The Washington Hot Potato 203

31 Trial, Prosecution, and Threat 221

32 The Threat Delivered 235

Part II Lethal Consequences

33 Another Name for Justice 243

34 Lost at Sea 249

35 Metamorphosis 257

36 The Power Nexus 261

37 HUAC and the Blame Game 265

38 A Cover-up Exposed 273

39 Killing Me Seven Times 277

Epilogue: Home Safe and Final Days 305

A Personal Note from Kay Haas 309

Notes on Compiling The First Counterspy 311

Acknowledgments 321

Notes 325

Selected Bibliography 361

Index 365

Editorial Reviews

01/31/2022

Journalist Pickut and Haas, the daughter of Bell Aircraft engineer Larry Haas, deliver a tantalizing if dubious espionage saga based on the elder Haas’s involvement from 1945 to 1947 in an FBI counterespionage campaign to expose Soviet spy Andrei Schevchenko. Citing records from the House Un-American Activities Committee, FBI transcripts, and CIA files declassified in 1995, the authors relate how Schevchenko “seduced” Haas and Bell Aircraft librarian Leona Franey into sharing classified information on jet-propulsion technology, not realizing that he was already under surveillance by the FBI. Straining credulity, the authors describe clandestine meetings in swanky hotels (“Watchers were everywhere, or so it seemed to Larry now that he was watching for people trying not to look like they were watching him”), hard-talking FBI agents, and a White House meeting during which President Harry Truman issued Haas a fake passport and orders to kill Schevchenko. In one of the book’s most dramatic sections, Kay Haas, now in her 80s, recalls being kidnapped by Soviet agents as a child. It’s a rousing tale, though there is no evidence (other than stories Haas told his family and friends) to back up the most colorful claims. Still, espionage fans willing to leave their skepticism at the door will savor the wild ride. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Tantalizing." "Dramatic." "Espionage fans...will savor the wild ride." -Publishers Weekly

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