Bentley had come with a wealth of knowledge, but little else. That did not mean that the Bentley case was a failure. 27 government employees had been identified by Bentley as Soviet agents and 21 non-government employees. The case had led the Bureau to nine subjects about whom it had previously not had any information, one of whom worked in the government. And it provided strong corroboration of the bona fides of Whittaker Chambers and confirmation of earlier Bureau investigative conclusions.

In the end, a case summary was turned over to the Department of Justice for consideration of whether or not to prosecute. [5] Within days, a senior Justice Department official had leaked information about the case to the press, destroying any chance to continue it as a counterintelligence investigation. The Bureau was furious. Attorney General Clark told the Bureau that he knew who the leaker was and that the problem would not repeat itself; it did, but that problem is for another paper. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire  Clark then asked the Bureau which of three approaches should be taken with the case: 1) continue it as an intelligence operation; 2) openly interrogate a select number of principles; or 3) furnish individual departments with evidence of the conspiracy sufficient to dismiss those Soviet agents still in federal employ?

Hoover assigned the matter to his Executive Conference, but didn't think much would come of the case. The Conference agreed. The case could no longer be continued as an intelligence investigation as all of the subjects were "very security conscious." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire  Furthermore, due to publicity, the effective interrogation of select principles had been compromised by the leaks. Prosecuting the matter successfully was also unlikely.

In the end, the AG decided to have the Bureau interview the principals with the hope that better evidence could be developed. Even before the Bureau followed through on the AG's orders, the effects of the Bureau's investigation and the subsequent leaks to the press began having an impact. In February, Alger Hiss left the Federal government for the Carnegie foundation and the next month Harry Dexter White left the International Monetary Fund. By mid-April, the FBI had conducted many of the interviews of targets in the Gregory Case, most of them on the same day, but "no material admissions were obtained" from the subjects and by the end of spring, Justice had adopted a new tactic: the Federal grand jury of the Southern District of New York. In the end, this tactic won two convictions, Alger Hiss and William Remington, both for perjury.

While the grand jury began to call witnesses, significant changes were occurring in American intelligence. On July 26, President Truman signed the National Security Act creating the Central Intelligence Agency and an American Intelligence Community. Under this new law, domestic counterintelligence remained with the Bureau. Other aspects of intelligence work also remained outside of the new CIA, specifically the Army's cryptanalytic efforts. One of these efforts, Venona, had begun several years earlier, but it is with what happened at the beginning of September that we are concerned.