Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

Despite the improvements after Stalingrad, however, the quality of Soviet intelligence on the eastern front—in particular the SIGINT—never compared with the intelligence on Germany available to their Western allies. The ULTRA intelligence provided to British and American commanders was, quite simply, the best in the history of warfare. The Soviet Union’s most striking intelligence successes during the Great Patriotic War, by contrast, were achieved not against its enemies but against its allies in the wartime Grand Alliance: Britain and the United States.

For most of the inter-war years the United States had ranked some way behind Britain as a target for INO operations. Even in the mid-1930s the main Soviet espionage networks in the United States were run by the Fourth Department (Military Intelligence, later renamed the GRU) rather than by the NKVD. Fourth Department agents included a series of young, idealistic high-flyers within the federal government, among them: Alger Hiss and Julian Wadleigh, both of whom entered the State Department in 1936; Harry Dexter White of the Treasury Department; and George Silverman, a government statistician who probably recruited White. 1Like the Cambridge Five, the Washington moles saw themselves as secret warriors in the struggle against fascism. Wadleigh wrote later:

When the Communist International represented the only world force effectively resisting Nazi Germany, I had offered my services to the Soviet underground in Washington as one small contribution to help stem the fascist tide. 2

The main NKVD operations in the United States during the mid-1930s were run by an illegal residency established in 1934 under the former Berlin resident, Boris Bazarov (codenamed NORD), with Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov (YUNG), a Soviet Tartar, as his deputy. 3Bazarov was remembered with affection by Hede Massing, an Austrian agent in his residency, as the warmest personality she had encountered in the NKVD. On the anniversary of the October Revolution in 1935 he sent her fifty long-stemmed red roses with a note which read:

Our lives are unnatural, but we must endure it for [the sake of] humanity. Though we cannot always express it, our little group is bound by love and consideration for one another. I think of you with great warmth.

Though Akhmerov, by contrast, struck Massing as a “Muscovite automaton,” he was less robotic than he appeared. 4Unknown to Massing, Akhmerov was engaged in a passionate love affair with his assistant, Helen Lowry, the cousin of the American Communist Party leader, Earl Browder, and—unusually—gained permission from the Centre to marry her. 5

Bazarov’s and Akhmerov’s recruits included three agents in the State Department: ERIKH, KIY and “19.” 6Probably the most important, as well as the only one of the three who can be clearly identified, was agent “19,” Laurence Duggan, who later became chief of the Latin American Division. 7To Hede Massing, Duggan seemed “an extremely tense, high-strung, intellectual young man.” His recruitment took some time, not least because Alger Hiss was simultaneously attempting to recruit him for the Fourth Department. In April 1936 Bazarov complained to the Centre that the “persistent Hiss” showed no sign of abandoning the attempt. 8A year later, in the midst of the Moscow show trials, Duggan told Akhmerov that he was afraid that, if he “collaborated” with Soviet intelligence, he might be exposed by a Trotskyite traitor. By the beginning of 1938, however, Duggan was supplying Akhmerov with State Department documents which were photographed in the illegal residency and then returned. In March Duggan reported that his close friend Sumner Welles, under-secretary at the State Department from 1938 to 1945, had told him he was becoming too attracted to Marxism and had given him a friendly warning about his left-wing acquaintances. 9Duggan’s future in the State Department, however, seemed as bright as that of Donald Maclean in the Foreign Office.

The Centre also saw a bright future for Michael Straight (codenamed NOMAD and NIGEL), the wealthy young American recruited shortly before his graduation from Cambridge University in 1937. 10Its optimism sprang far more from Straight’s family connections than from any evidence of his enthusiasm for a career as a secret agent. Straight’s job hunt after his return to the United States began at the top—over tea at the White House with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. With some assistance from Mrs. Roosevelt, he obtained a temporary, unpaid assignment in the State Department early in 1938. Soon afterwards, he received a phone call from Akhmerov, who passed on “greetings from your friends at Cambridge University” and invited him to dinner at a local restaurant. Akhmerov introduced himself as “Michael Green,” then ordered a large meal. Straight watched as he ate:

He was dark and stocky, with broad lips and a ready smile. His English was good; his manner was affable and easy. He seemed to be enjoying his life in America.

Ahkmerov seemed to accept that it would be some time before Straight had access to important documents, but was evidently prepared to wait. Before paying the bill, he delivered a brief lecture on international relations. Straight was “too stunned to think clearly.” Though Straight claims that he was “unwilling to become a Soviet agent in the Department of State,” he plainly did not say so to Akhmerov. The two men “parted as friends” and Straight agreed to continue their meetings. 11

With the approach of war in Europe, the Centre’s interest in the United States steadily increased. In 1938 the NKVD used the defection of the main Fourth Department courier, Whittaker Chambers, as a pretext for taking over most of the military intelligence agent network, with the notable exception of Alger Hiss. 12In the United States, as elsewhere, however, the expansion of NKVD operations was disrupted by the hunt for imaginary “enemies of the people.” Ivan Andreyevich Morozov (codenamed YUZ and KIR), who was stationed in the New York legal residency in 1938-9, sought to prove his zeal to the Centre by denouncing the Resident, Pyotr Davidovich Gutzeit (codenamed NIKOLAI), and most of his colleagues as secret Trotskyists. 13In 1938 both Gutzeit and Bazarov, the legal and illegal residents, were recalled and shot. 14Morozov’s denunciation of the next legal resident, Gayk Badalovich Ovakimyan (codenamed GENNADI), was less successful and may have prompted Morozov’s own recall in 1939. 15

Bazarov was succeeded as illegal resident by his former deputy, Iskhak Akhmerov, who henceforth controlled most political intelligence operations in the United States. 16Mitrokhin noted the codenames of eight rather diverse individuals in whom the Centre seemed to place particularly high hopes on the eve of the Second World War: 17Laurence Duggan (agent “19,” later FRANK) in the State Department; 18Michael Straight (NIGEL), also in the State Department; Martha Dodd Stern (LIZA), daughter of the former US ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, and wife of the millionaire Alfred Kaufman Stern (also a Soviet agent); Martha’s brother, William E. Doss, Jr. (PRESIDENT), who had run unsuccessfully for Congress as a Democrat and still had political ambitions; Harry Dexter White in the Treasury Department (KASSIR, later JURIST); an agent codenamed MORIS (probably John Abt) in the Justice Department”; 19Boris Morros (FROST), the Hollywood producer of Laurel and Hardy’s Flying Deuces and other box-office hits; 20Mary Wolf Price (codenamed KID and DIR), an undeclared Communist who was secretary to the well-known columnist Walter Lippmann; and Henry Buchman (KHOSYAIN, “Employer”), owner of a women’s fashion salon in Baltimore. 21

In August 1939, however, political intelligence operations in the United States, as in Britain, were partially disrupted by the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Laurence Duggan broke off contact with Akhmerov in protest. 22Others who had serious doubts included Michael Straight. At a meeting in October in a restaurant below Washington’s Union Station, Akhmerov tried to reassure him. “Great days are approaching!” he declared. With the beginning of the Second World War, revolution would spread like wildfire across Germany and France. 23Straight was unimpressed and failed to attend the next meeting. 24Duggan and Straight are unlikely to have been the only agents to break contact, at least temporarily, with the NKVD.