Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

13. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

14. Others recalled from the United States to be interrogated and liquidated in Moscow included the illegal CHARLIE, whose file was destroyed and whose identity is now unknown. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, pp. 180-1.

15. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. Significantly, material on Morozov’s denunciation of two successive residents was among that excluded from the documents selected by the SVR for the recent study of Soviet espionage in the United States in the Stalin era by Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood. While obliged to acknowledge the purge of many loyal foreign intelligence officers, the SVR is generally reluctant to reveal cases where they were denounced by their own comrades. Despite such examples of SVR censorship, for which Weinstein and Vassiliev are not, of course, responsible, The Haunted Wood is a very valuable contribution to the history of Soviet intelligence operations.

16. It is unclear from Mitrokhin’s notes whether or not Akhmerov was given charge of an independent illegal residency before Bazarov’s recall. However, Hede Massing’s memoirs strongly suggest that both Bazarov and Akhmerov were members of the same illegal residency until at least 1937. Massing, This Deception, pp. 187-8, 191.

17. vol. 6, ch. 3, part 1. Significantly, the list of names noted by Mitrokhin did not include Samuel Dickstein, a Democratic congressman from Manhattan (codenamed CROOK), who had volunteered his services to the NKVD in 1937 but demanded a high price for his intelligence. Over the next two years, the NKVD oscillated between pride at having an agent in Congress and suspicion that Dickstein was recycling publicly available information. In June 1939 Ovakimyan denounced him in a message to the Center as “a complete racketeer and blackmailer.” Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, ch. 7.

18. On Duggan’s codenames, see above, n. 7.

19. MORIS is described in Mitrokhin’s note as an “archivist” at the Justice Department (vol. 6, ch. 3, part 1); this may, however, mean simply that he had access to department files and archives.

20. On the careers of Morros (who became an FBI double agent early in the Cold War), Martha Dodd Stern and William E. Dodd, Jr. (both of whom failed to live up to the Centre’s high early expectations), see Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, chs. 3, 6.

21. KHOSYAIN is identified as Buchman in vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2, but the spelling of his name (“Bukman” in Cyrillic transliteration) is uncertain.

22. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

23. Straight, After Long Silence, pp. 143-4.

24. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2; vol. 7, ch. 10, app. 6.

25. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. The claim in an SVR official history that Akhmerov was recalled in mid-1939 is difficult to reconcile with Straight’s account of a meeting with him in late October. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, ch. 15.

26. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, ch. 15. On Ovakimyan’s role in preparations for Trotsky’s assassination, see Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 183-4. The Centre’s obsession with the pursuit of Trotskyists in the United States continued even after Trotsky’s assassination.

27. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 135-7. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, pp. 177-8. There were two New York chemical institutes; the SVR histories do not make clear which is referred to.

28. vol. 6, ch. 6.

29. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 169-71; Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, p. 177. Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, p. 173.

30. vol. 6, ch. 3, part 1. The VENONA decrypts of NKVD wartime telegrams from the United States include the codenames of approximately 200 agents (about half of whom remain unidentified). Since these telegrams represent only a fraction of the wartime communications between the Center and its American residencies, the total NKVD network must have been substantially larger. Mitrokhin’s notes give no statistics for the size of the network after 1941. The occupational breakdown for the network in April 1941 is highly incomplete. Apart from the forty-nine “engineers,” Mitrokhin gives the occupations of only thirty-six others, of whom twenty-two were journalists. Many of the agents were immigrants and refugees. In 1940-1, sixty-six Baltic recruits emigrated to the United States (vol. 6, ch. 3, part 1).

31. Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, p. 173.

32. Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoi Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, p. 178.

33. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 290-1. Weinstein, Perjury, pp. 292-3. KGB files cited by Weinstein and Vassiliev ( The Haunted Wood, pp. 106, 159, 161-2) identify Lauchlin Currie as the agent PAGE referred to in a number of the VENONA decrypts. Mitrokhin’s notes do not mention Currie.

34. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, p. 53.

35. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 50-3.

36. In 1929 Zarubina (then Gorskaya) had been used to seduce the pro-Trotskyist illegal Blyumkin and lure him back to execution in Moscow.

37. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

38. vol. 6, ch. 12.

39. vol. 6, ch. 12. Klehr, Haynes and Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism, ch. 7.

40. A number of VENONA decrypts refer to Lee’s work as a Soviet agent. Other important agents in OSS identified by VENONA include Maurice Halperin (HARE), J. Julius Joseph (CAUTIOUS) and Donald Niven Wheeler (IZRA). (For examples, see VENONA, 2nd release, pp. 118, 178-9; 3rd release, part 2, p. 196.) Soviet agents at OSS headquarters were probably well into double figures. Communists (not all of them agents) have been identified in the Russian, Spanish, Balkan, Hungarian and Latin American sections of OSS’s RA division, and in its operational German, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian and Indonesian divisions. Peake, “OSS and the Venona Decrypts”; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 294-5; Klehr, Haynes and Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism, pp. 276-8.

41. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 450-1.

42. Klehr, Haynes and Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism, pp. 234-6.

43. vol. 6, ch. 12.

44. VENONA, 2nd release, part 2, p. 58.

45. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 451.

46. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

47. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

48. Akhmerov told the Center in April 1944, “For your information: I have never met RULEVOY [Browder].” VENONA, 3rd release, part 1, pp. 26-8.

49. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

50. Straight, After Long Silence, pp. 167-8.

51. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2. Fearful that State Department security officers had discovered his earlier connection with Soviet intelligence, Duggan was less forthcoming during the war than he had been earlier. In June 1944 he left the State Department to join the newly founded United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration as diplomatic adviser. Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, pp. 16-19.

52. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

53. We are indebted for information on Henry Wallace’s plans for Duggan and White to Professor Harvey Klehr.

54. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

55. Bentley, Out of Bondage, pp. 103-4, 115.

56. When Moscow changed control methods later in the War, the New York residency reported to the Center: “In ALBERT [Akhmerov]’s opinion our workers [Soviet intelligence officers] would hardly manage to work with the same success under the FELLOWCOUNTRYMAN [Communist Party] flag. We may possibly set up direct liaison with [members of the Silvermaster group], but it is doubtful whether we could secure from them the same results as ROBERT [Silvermaster], who, constantly dealing with them, has many advantages over us.” The residency also reported that Silvermaster “did not believe in our orthodox methods.” VENONA decrypts, 3rd release, part 3, p. 2.