Spying on “Mr. Bartok” in Wartime America
Spying on “Mr. Bartok” in Wartime America

Summary/Abstract: Few people can imagine Béla Bartók, the shy and elderly concert pianist, ethnomusicologist and composer of very modern music, as a plausible subversive— in today’s parlance, a “potential terrorist”—who had to be spied on by the intelligence agencies of the United States during the Second World War. Yet, that is precisely what happened. No, he was not really considered a threat to America’s national security—and that was certainly the opinion of spymaster Allan W. Dulles, the future boss of the CIA—yet he was commented on more than once by various members of Washington’s intelligence bureaucracy during his stay in the United States.

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