Sisson Documents
Origin and publication
The namesake of the collection of documents Edgar Sisson worked in early 1918 for the American Committee for Public Information (CPI ) in Petrograd. It was an organization that should enter the war propaganda and justify America's support. Through the mediation of Ferdynand Antoni Ossendowski of Americans Sisson bought for $ 25,000, a collection of 68 papers secret, apparently occupied the financial support of the Russian Revolution by the German General Staff and the German Reichsbank. The diplomat brought the documents over Scandinavia in the United States. As of 15 September 1918, the documents were published in the American press. The result was a discrediting of the Russian revolutionaries as paid agents of Ludendorff. Since the authenticity of such documents has been partially challenged, CPI published the book The German - Bolshevik Conspiracy. The book contained various documents with translation and analysis of the recognized professional historian John Franklin Jameson and Samuel Harper from the National Board for Historical Service. The two historians classified the documents as authentic one. Edgar Sisson, however, no profit generated by its risky smuggling. Your authenticity remained controversial. 1956 pointed to the historian George F. Kennan, that it was fraudulent documents. Recent studies suggest that it had been at the forger to Ossendowski itself.