One of the most interesting witnesses to take the stand was Elizabeth Terrill Bentley, the so-called "Red Spy Queen." A graduate of Vassar, Bentley was studying in Italy at the University of Florence when she first became interested in fascism. In 1934 she returned to America and abandoned fascism, joining the American League Against War and Fascism and the Communist Party. In 1938, while working at the Italian Library of Information in New York, Bentley met Jacob Golos the Chief of Soviet Espionage Operations in the United States. Bentley became Golos's lover and provided him with information acquired from her work with the Italian government. Eventually Bentley would become Golos's assistant and courier. It was in this capacity that she purportedly talked to Julius Rosenberg over the telephone. In 1945 Bentley had grown tired of her life of espionage and voluntarily confessed at the New Haven, Connecticut office of the FBI. The public became aware of Bentley when she testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1948. She had become a celebrity ex-Communist and even published an autobiography, Inside the Russian Spy Organization.

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