John Daniel Barron (January 26, 1930 – February 24, 2005) was an American journalist and investigative writer. He wrote several books about

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

espionage via the

KGB The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...

and other agencies.

Early life

John Barron was born January 26, 1930, in

Wichita Falls Wichita Falls ( ) is a city in and the seat of government of Wichita County, Texas, United States. It is the principal city of the Wichita Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Archer, Clay, and Wichita counties. Accordin ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

, the son of a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...

minister. He graduated from the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus Universit ...

and studied

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

at the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Naval Postgraduate School The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is a public graduate school operated by the United States Navy and located in Monterey, California. It offers master’s and doctoral degrees in more than 70 fields of study to the U.S. Armed Forces, DOD ci ...

Monterey, California Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under bo ...

. He served in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

as a

naval intelligence Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist commanders in their decisions. This aim is achieved by providing an assessment of data from a ...

officer.

Journalistic career

In 1957, he joined the ''

Washington Star ''The Washington Star'', previously known as the ''Washington Star-News'' and the Washington ''Evening Star'', was a daily afternoon newspaper published in Washington, D.C., between 1852 and 1981. The Sunday edition was known as the ''Sunday Star ...

'' as an investigative reporter. In 1965, Barron joined the Washington bureau of ''

Reader's Digest ''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wi ...

''. There he wrote more than 100 stories on a wide variety of subjects—notably a 1980 story concerning unanswered questions surrounding the drowning death of

Mary Jo Kopechne Mary Jo Kopechne (; July 26, 1940 – July 18 or 19, 1969) was an American secretary, and one of the campaign workers for U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign, a close team known as the "Boiler Room Girls". In 1969, she d ...

at Chappaquiddick in a car driven by

Ted Kennedy Edward Moore Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Massachusetts for almost 47 years, from 1962 until his death in 2009. A member of the Democratic ...

. After Barron published his 1974 book ''KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents'', the

attempted to discredit him by faking claims that Barron was part of a

Zionist Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...

conspiracy as well as "...made much of his Jewish origins...". In 1996, Barron published a book detailing the saga of the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

's Operation SOLO, involving the infiltration of the top leadership of the

Communist Party, USA The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...

by the FBI's secret informant

Morris Childs Morris H. Childs (born Moishe Chilovsky; June 10, 1902– June 5, 1991) was a Ukrainian-American political activist and American Communist Party functionary who became a Soviet espionage agent (1929) and then a double agent for the Federal Bureau ...

. From 1958 through 1977, Childs traveled to Moscow over 50 times, acting as a courier between the CPUSA and

Communist Party of the Soviet Union "Hymn of the Bolshevik Party" , headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow , general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first) Mikhail Gorbachev (last) , founded = , banned = , founder = Vladimir Lenin , newspaper ...

.Richard Gid Powers
"Double Agent,"
''New York Times'', April 21, 1996. Childs was instrumental in helping with the transfer of over $28 million from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the Communist Party of the US to help fund its activities, with each transaction painstakingly reported by Childs to his FBI handlers. This story had been told, in fictional form, in

Baynard Kendrick Baynard Hardwick Kendrick (April 8, 1894 – March 22, 1977) was an American mystery novelist. He wrote whodunit novels about Duncan Maclain, a blind private investigator who worked with his two German shepherds and his household of assistants t ...

's 1959 novel ''Hot Red Money''. Barron's and co-author Anthony Paul's 1977 book ''Murder of a Gentle Land: The Untold Story of Communist Genocide in Cambodia'' was important in overturning the

Cambodian genocide denial Cambodian genocide denial was the belief expressed by many Western academics that claims of atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge government (1975–1979) in Cambodia were much exaggerated. Many scholars of Cambodia and intellectuals oppose ...

and the myth that the

Khmer Rouge The Khmer Rouge (; ; km, ខ្មែរក្រហម, ; ) is the name that was popularly given to members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the regime through which the CPK ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. ...

rulers of

Cambodia Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailand t ...

were benign agrarian reformers.

Death and legacy

John Barron died in

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

on February 24, 2005. He was 75 years old at the time of his death. Barron's papers are held by the

Hoover Institution The Hoover Institution (officially The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace; abbreviated as Hoover) is an American public policy think tank and research institution that promotes personal and economic liberty, free enterprise, and ...

Archives at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...

.Lora Soroka and Xiuzhi Zhou
"Register of the John Barron Papers, 1927–1996,"
Palo Alto, CA: Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, 1999.

Works

* ''KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents''. New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1974. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1974. bNew York: Bantam Books, 1974. * ''Murder of a gentle land: the untold story of a Communist genocide in Cambodia'', Authors John Barron, Anthony Paul, Reader's Digest Press, 1977. * '' MiG Pilot: The Final Escape of Lieutenant Belenko'', New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980. * "The KGB's Magical War for 'Peace'" in

Ernest W. Lefever Ernest Warren Lefever (November 12, 1919 – July 29, 2009) was an American political theorist and foreign affairs expert who founded the Ethics and Public Policy Center in 1976 and was nominated for a State Department post by President Ronal ...

and E. Stephen Hunt (eds.), ''The Apocalyptic Premise: Nuclear Arms Debated: Thirty-one Essays by Statesmen, Scholars, Religious Leaders, and Journalists.'' Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982. * ''KGB Today: The Hidden Hand''. New York:

Berkley Books Berkley Books is an imprint of the Penguin Group. History Berkley Books began as an independent company in 1955. It was founded as "Chic News Company" by Charles Byrne and Frederick Klein, who had worked for Avon; they quickly renamed it Berk ...

, 1983. * ''Breaking the Ring: The Bizarre Case of the Walker Family Spy Ring'',

John Anthony Walker John Anthony Walker Jr. (July 28, 1937 – August 28, 2014) was a United States Navy chief warrant officer and communications specialist convicted of spying for the Soviet Union from 1967 to 1985 and sentenced to life in prison. In lat ...

. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
''Operation SOLO: The FBI's Man in the Kremlin''
Washington, DC: Regnery, 1996.

Footnotes

External links

* Lora Soroka and Xiuzhi Zhou
"Register of the John Barron Papers, 1927–1996,"
Palo Alto, CA: Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University, 1999. * Matt Schudel

''The Washington Post,'' March 9, 2005; Page B06. * John Miller
"He shot down Commies"
''

National Review ''National Review'' is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by the author William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief i ...

'' online. * William Schultz
"Remembering long time Communist conspiracy fighter John Barron"
''

Human Events ''Human Events'' is an American conservative political news and analysis website. Founded in 1944 as a print newspaper, ''Human Events'' became a digital-only publication in 2013. ''Human Events'' takes its name from the first sentence of the Un ...

''. {{DEFAULTSORT:Barron, John 1930 births 2005 deaths American political writers American male non-fiction writers George Polk Award recipients University of Missouri alumni American historians of espionage 20th-century American historians People of the Office of Naval Intelligence 20th-century American male writers