according to transcripts of kgb files that have been published by yale university press in 2009, ernest was pitched in early 1941 probably in new york city, possibly in january by a man named jacob golos. and golos wrote back to moscow he had recruited ernest hemming way as a soviet spy. and that ernest had agreed to cooperate for id logical reasons. he added that ernest had accepted contact instructions for the next clandestine meetings. as far as i can tell from the traffic, these were material contract instructions. probably something like a jell-o box that had been cut in a certain pattern. the person who you were meeting would have the other half. and that's how you know you have

the right person. how could this be? i'm a life long hemingway fan. i found this out by accident. when i'm doing research i like to troll in the waters next to the ones i'm fishing. i thought what the hell. let's see what kgb what up to in the united states around this time. so i went and looked at his book. i went holy homoly, it says ernt hemingway was a russian spy. you know, people who like -- a lot of people who like hemingway like him for good red blooded american reasons. you like hemingway in part because he's a man who writes about telling the truth, telling it like it really is. that's not what spies do. especially spies who work for

another country. also another thing that makes it hard to believe that ernest would have accepted this pitch is that even though he had many friends on the left, he said he always admired them as individuals. he did not necessarily admire their beliefs. he himself throughout most of his life claimed to be a-political. he said he did not like, quote, the ideology boys. he said i could never be a communist. i go what's going on here? how do we break this down? how do we understand it? the first thing i did was look at how the documents got here. it's kind of an interesting story. it goes back to paristroyka. some people in the kgb says we need to tell our story. and maybe make bucks at the same

time contributed to the retirement fund. so they bring in a retired kgb guy. he's working as a journalist. they say we want you to work on american espionage conducted by the kgb in world war ii and the cold war. then we'll take a look at it once you've written. we'll say you can publish that part. he's the guy that stumbles on ernest. that's not really what he's looking for, but he comes across this file summary and you can just imagine the junior officer being told okay, this afternoon, we want you to read the whole hemingway file and write this summer so we the seniors don't have to go through it all. and that's one of the things he's copied out verbatim which is a summary what ernest did or

didn't do for the kgb. i also checked -- who's been working on these collections. this is quite a field from what i normally do. and these are really solid guys. there's a gentleman at the library of congress. there's another expert. and it's generally accepted he did a good job of copying what he saw in the files. which he eventually brought out west as the winds changed, the political climate changed in russia and some hard liners came back into kgb. and said what are you doing? i'm doing what you contracted me to do and write this history. they said no, you're not. and if you try and continue with this, we're going to hurt you. so he's been a kgb guy for a long time.

he takes it seriously. he moves to england and arranges for his files to be smuggled out to him. now they're in the library of congress. his handwritten notes. we can all go over there and see them. the documentation is probably authentic. maybe they might have smeared some guy or some detector that they didn't like for some reason. but it's hard to believe that anybody in the 1990s was saying we need to go against ernest hemingway and blacken his name. no, i think this was a by-product of a different kind of operation. then i looked at golos and thought did he get it right? did he report what happened accurately? he would not be the first intelligence officer that had gone to a meeting, spoken in very general terms to somebody

he'd met a few times, then went back to the embassy and said hey. i just recruited jones. he said he will do anything i ask of him. then they send the cable off to their headquarters. i wonder, was golos this kind of guy to exaggerate his accomplishments? the answer i came up with was probably not. in the early 1900s he's an illegal actor in russia. he gets captures by the czars police. golos escapes by going east. okay? this is a pretty tough thing to do. and he eventually winds up in the united states in new york and eventually becomes an american citizen. golos, the russians -- well,

they take over russia. oh yet intel services start going and they start communist parties including the communist party of the united states. and golos is one of the founding members of cp usa. and would be a support asset for the kgb that comes over and says well, do you know they have stations in new york, washington, and san francisco around this time. so '30s and '40s. do you know anyone that can help us with this information or that information? can you get me a passport? that's a specialty of his. even though he's not a training trained officer. he knows the american target almost better than anybody in the kgb. and the kgb has real problems at

this time because stalin keeps calling. anybody too good gets called back and gets shot. he can't go because he's in trouble with the fbi. they have told him he can't travel. he says i'm sorry i can't come because the fbi, i'll be on their -- i'm already on their blacklist. i'll be on a blacker list if i leave the kocountry and i'm goi good stuff here. he's the american guy on the scene for a period of time. he is enormously productive. he is one of the main guys in a project stealing american nuclear secrets. if you were an intel officer, you could imagine. this was his report bullet. changed world history. i mean, this is a long ball

hitter who doesn't need an ernest hemingway to pad out his resume. so i concluded that it was not likely that golos got it wrong. that he probably did have a meeting with ernest. we only have one source. but it's not likely that he got it wrong or would exaggerate for any reason. so how can you explain this? why would ernest say yes to the kgb especially in january of 1941 when the soviet union doesn't really look to good. to most people on the left that's when hitler and stalin are in bed together. the explanation i came up with is pretty much three words. and it's the spanish civil war. in the mid-30s. this was a really passionate cause for lots of people. something like the vietnam war.

in this country you were either for it or against it. there wasn't much in between. and ernest went to spain three times as a correspondent. and he saw this as one of the defining struggles of his time. it was conservatism, religion, fascism on the one hand. it was the forces of democracy, freedom, progress on the other hand. the way this developed in the spanish civil war, the fascists are being supported. so franco and his guys. they are being supported by the germans and the italians that are pouring in troops, ammunition, whatnot. a lot of crucial help that enables them to progress. and nobody at first is really willing to help the republic. the democracies are going i

don't know if we want to get involved in this. britain, france, the united states for various reasons are not comfortable with being heavily involved in spain. there is one country that is. and that's the soviet union. complicated reasons why the soviets didn't want to do this. that's a whole other talk. but they're there. they send advisers more than troops. they send ammunitions. and they send an enormous kgb contingent. they help organize and train the common turn, the various international brigades and this effort really impressing ernest in spain. he decides -- and he says this is few times. you can find it in for whom the bell tolls. but he says the only way we're

going to win this war is by accepting communist or soviet discipline. he doesn't necessarily say he believes in communism or soviet russia, but he believes that the discipline that they imposed in spain was the only chance to win that war. now, ernest is wearing blinders when he's saying this because as time goes on in the spanish civil war, the soviets are ubds mining they're there to help. also they steal all of its gold. give it to us for safekeeping and we'll take the part we need to pay for the arms that we're sending you. but they take it all and stalin has a party when it gets to russia on ships going through the mediterranean. he has a wild party and says hey, if they think they're ever getting this back, they're wrong. anyway, it's probably still

there. so ernest doesn't really focus on any of this stuff. he senses some of it. he thinks it's accessed by vims but he doesn't seem any reason for communist discipline. so what do they want from him? why would the kgb come to ernest? what do you have to earn? they looked at him as a journalist. for them journalists were use for for a number of things. they could write an article that's slanted towards your point of view. they could be principle agents. they could run other agents and that is a way to get information from lower level sources funneled through the journalist and then turned over to the kgb case officer. they can spot new contracts. they can do reporting on their own.

ernest knew from the maids to prostitutes in havana. he had people coming to his house saying interesting things. those are reasons we can speculate. it's not entirely clear from the summary what they wanted from him. before they could get anything from ernest, they had to get to the next meeting. remember he got the material recognition signal. the problem was he didn't use it. and the case file that we have shows an enormous amount of frustration on the part of the kcg. ernest is not a reliable agent. you want him to show up on time and give you the information. they can't get ernest a meeting. in the course of their relationship, they had fewer than ten meetings. they had two in 1943 in cuba. he was a hard guy to hook up

with in london. he wasn't there very long. how did they find him. how long did they get somebody into him? how did they sit down and have a meeting? some kgb guy did his homework and should have got a promotion. then another meeting with him in havana. every time they meet and say yeah sure i'll do what you want. then nothing happens. the file shows no concrete results. ernest doesn't produce for him. the subject of really another talk contact is ultimatically dropped on both sides. so what do we have at the end of this day looking at ernest hemingway at the end of world war ii? the fbi and hoover as you might of gathered by now were not natural friends. and hoover said, you know,

ernest is just the wrong guy. he heard all about what's going on in cuba. he said i cannot think of somebody who is more ill suited towards this kind of work than ernest hemingway? he wrote down a couple reasons. drinking, judgment, politics, and whatnot. by the way the fbi kept an eye on him even in mayo clinic just before he died. they looked at hemingway and came to the conclusion that this is somebody we really shouldn't have as a formal part of our organization. kgb does one memo in washington. they got a lot of oss memos and some fbi memos but not this one. they tried their hand at it. nobody really got a whole lot out of ernest.

ernest as i say it's something he devoted a lot of energy to. but it may have been a dramatic story, but it didn't have dramatic results. there just wasn't a lot of product at the end of the day. only a story i really like to tell. so that's about it. thank you very much 37 [ applause ] >> happy to take questions. >> one over here. >> i would like to know is not about spain. why did hemingway kill himself?

[ inaudible ] >> that's long and complicated. i think it's the long-term effects of drinking. he's probably a -- he was probably an alcoholic, physiologically. his product as a great author falls off dramatically. the last great book he writes is "for whom the bell tolls." then he writes "old man and the sea." that's really the last home run he writes. everything else is falling off. he's deteriorating physically. i think they -- i think it's a cascading effect from the alcohol. he's suspicious. maybe he has some other conditions. i think the he was -- what's -- i hesitate to advance a diagnosis but mentally unstable. that played a big role in

shooting himself. also his father shot himself. ernest had a lot of trouble with his mom. never really liked his mom. and after dad shot himself -- so ernest was upset for shooting himself. mom one year for christmas sends him the pistol that dad shot himself with. so, you know, it's a sad story. it's one of those family lore things that works out that ends badly for ernest. >> i know that the picture in the brochure with hemingway, that it is general lynn. i know that in late july of '44, he was assigned to general lynn.

now, was the -- was general lynn involved in lyons? >> not that i know of. the way i reconstruct it is, in the first part of july -- july -- sorry. first part of august 1944 ernest is with lanham and his troops. and lanham is not directly on the push to paris. so ernest says, i got to go looking for the main story. i'll come back later. and he does come back later. those are the groups, the 22nd infantry regiment, that's the group he goes back to after the fall of paris off and on until he goes back to cuba. >> thank you. >> sure. what else? anybody got any? yes, sir.

>> you say his son asked to go to asia. did his son go to asia? >> no. the war didn't last long enough. it's a fascinating family history. bumby was a guy -- everyone lives in ernest's shadow. especially his sons and little brother. bumby has trouble finding himself in life. he's in and out of the army. he serves for -- in uniform for a number of years. then he tries various careers. stockbroker, professional fisherman, whatnot. what he does do, he marries a wonderful woman and they have two daughters, margo and mariel hemmingway. one of them sadly commits suicide. ernest's brother, lester, also commits suicide. you know, it's -- again, it's a sad family history that comes out.

can i ask you all a question? anybody else got any ideas of why ernest would sign up with the kgb? does that -- is that stunning to you? you know, what would you -- how would you break it down? yes, sir? >> the question was, did he imagine he could be a double or triple agent, that would be a great adventure. i've thought of that. it's possible. that's an intriguing -- it's an intriguing theory. if i could find that ernest had tried to work his way into places where he would get better access, you know, it's something worth pursuing. there's still a lot out there. it's a great story that hasn't totally been told. there's a lot of places i want to go and look for stuff.

that's something i'm going to consider. >> how complete are the files? are there anything still secret? >> to my knowledge, there are a few -- there's a handful of things that are still secret. i've encountered one or two things, you know, since the file's been pulled that probably in the personnel file, so it would be something to do with somebody who may be still alive. there's still at least a handful of veterans still with us. but by and large, there's this whole treasure-trove of documents out there. what makes it interesting is the findings are incomplete. you go out there looking for hemmingway, and you'll only find him in two or three finding aids. you wind up searching in things that might have hemmingway in them and on a really great day you find a nugget that you bring

home and brag about at dinner. >> okay. well, thank you so much. [ applause ] thank you all so much for coming. have a great day. c-span's 2012 local content city tour takes our book tv and american history tv programming on the road the first weekend of each month. march featured shreveport, louisiana, with book tv at noel memorial library. >> he was a local man who was born here and lived most of his

life. he started accumulating books when he was a teenager and continued until he was in his 80s. over his lifetime, he accumulated over 200,000 volumes. if we have a gem in the collection, it is probably going to be this one. one of the books i'm most proud of. it's in the original binding from 1699. and it was once owned by a very famous scientist. you can see he's written his name, i. newton. we're not pulling it out so much anymore because it is starting to flake away on the title page. >> and american history tv looked at civil war era medical practices at the pioneer heritage museum. >> pioneer medicine is a long stretch from what it is today. you consider that, the things that -- that we take for granted today when we go to the doctor, things like the instruments being as germ free as possible, or the doctor has washed his hands before he decides to work on us.

we use the term loosely for doctors when we're talking early medicine. a lot of these doctors in our region were self-taught. or they had worked under somebody else who had been self-taught and they were getting ready to retire, so they would just learn as they -- as they went. >> our lcd cities tour continues the weekend of march 31st and april 1st from little rock, arkansas, on c-span 2 and 3. congratulations to all this year's winners of c-span's student cam video documentary competition. a record number of middle and high school students entered a video on the theme "the constitution and you." showing which part of the constitution is important to them and why. watch all the winning videos at our website, studentcam.org. joining us mornings in april as we show the top 27 videos on c-span. we'll talk with the winners during "washington journal." there's a new website for american history tv where you can find our schedules and

preview our upcoming programs. watch featured video from our regular weekly series as well as access ahtv's history sweeps. history in the news. and social media from facebook, youtube, twitter and foursquare. follow american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3 and online at c-span.org/history. james madison, the fourth president of the united states, often referred to as the father of the constitution, owned about 100 slaves at montpelier. his 4,600 acre estate in orange county, virginia. american history tv travels 90 miles south of the nation's capital to learn about an archaeological project investigating the enslaved communities of james madison's montpelier. the three-year archaeology project is jointly funded by the national endowment for the humanities and the montpelier foundation. >>my name is matthew reeves. i'm director of archaeology here at james madison's montpelier.

where we're standing is in what we call the south yard. this is the area where the house slaves for the madisons both lived and worked. what we're in the middle of is an archaeological investigation of this area. we first learned about the south yard through an insurance map dated 1837. this is when dolly moves back to washington, d.c. she takes out an insurance policy on the house. and part of what they need for this insurance policy is a plat showing where all the outbuildings are. we've used this plat, this plat's been incredibly important for us to locate the outbuildings in the this area. in 1990 we located a chimney base, a brick chimney base that we were able to figure out from the archaeology was a part of a duplex or a slave quarter that had a central chimney and then a hearth on either side. there would be two households that lived there. with that we're able to line up the insurance plat with the rest of the grounds and able to start

to explore this area for other outbuildings. what we found is, is that the -- we've got three duplexes in this area. three homes for slave quarters. and four of these buildings we've marked. two smoke houses that are on the insurance map. a kitchen that's beside the house that's actually an 18th century kitchen that we located through archaeology. then this other duplex which is one of three that we're going to be reconstructing. now, the -- the timber frames that you see out here, these represent the size and the maskings of these buildings. give visitors an idea where the buildings are and how large they are. what we've done with these is the timber framing is authentic to the early 19th century. we had a historic architect, willie graham, who designed the timber frames based on a combination of the archaeology and contemporary timber frame te