Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

Though the Centre was plainly impressed by the quality of Communist recruits talent-spotted by Browder, it cautioned Zarubin against over-reliance on them:

We permit the use of the Communist [Party members’] illegal intelligence capabilities… as a supplement to the Residency’s operations, but it would be a mistake to turn these capabilities into the main basis of operations. 46

At almost the same moment in December 1941 when Zarubin arrived in New York as legal resident, Iskhak Akhmerov (successively codenamed YUNG and ALBERT) returned to reestablish the illegal residency, also based in New York, which he had been ordered to abandon two years earlier. Though he had previously used Turkish and Canadian identity documents, on this occasion he carried a doctored US passport which he had acquired in 1938. 47Unlike Zarubin, Akhmerov avoided all contact with Browder—despite the fact that his wife and assistant, Helen Lowry (codenamed MADLEN and ADA), was Browder’s niece. 48In March 1942 the Akhmerovs moved from New York to Baltimore, a more convenient location from which to run agents based in Washington. There Akhmerov, whose stepfather had been a furrier, opened a fur and clothes business in partnership with a local Soviet agent, KHOSYAIN, to give himself a cover occupation. 49

Michael Straight (NIGEL), in whom Akhmerov had placed such high hopes before the Second World War, refused to resume work as a Soviet agent. Straight had one last meeting with Akhmerov in Washington early in 1942, declined any further meeting, shook hands and said goodbye. 50Most other pre-war agents, however, were successfully reactivated, among them Laurence Duggan (FRANK) 51and Harry Dexter White (JURIST). 52Henry Wallace, vice-president during Roosevelt’s third term of office (1941 to 1945), said later that if the ailing Roosevelt had died during that period and he had become president, it had been his intention to make Duggan his Secretary of State and White his Secretary of the Treasury. 53The fact that Roosevelt survived three months into an unprecedented fourth term in the White House, and replaced Wallace with Harry Truman as vice-president in January 1945, deprived Soviet intelligence of what would have been its most spectacular success in penetrating a major Western government. The NKVD succeeded none the less in penetrating all the most sensitive sections of the Roosevelt administration.

Akhmerov’s most productive Washington network was a group of Communists and fellow travelers with government jobs run by Nathan Gregory Silvermaster (successively codenamed PAL and ROBERT), a statistician in the Farm Security Administration, later seconded to the Board of Economic Warfare. 54“Greg” Silvermaster retained the untarnished idealism of the revolutionary dream. A chronic sufferer from bronchial asthma, which often left him gasping for breath, he believed that, “My time is strictly limited, and when I die I want to feel that at least I have had some part in building a decent life for those who come after me.” 55

Akhmerov believed, probably correctly, that, despite the security risks involved in Silvermaster’s unorthodox tradecraft, he was able to obtain far more intelligence from his increasing number of sources than if each of them was run individually by a Soviet controller. Silvermaster himself disdained the NKVD’s bureaucratic “orthodox methods.” Though most of his sources must have been aware of the ultimate destination of their intelligence, the network was run under what Akhmerov termed “the Communist Party flag.” Informants regarded themselves as helping the CPUSA, which would in turn assist its Soviet comrades. 56

To limit the security risks, Akhmerov placed two cut-outs between himself and the Silvermaster group. The first was a courier, Elizabeth Bentley (codenamed MIRNA, then, more condescendingly, UMNITSA—“Good Girl”), a Vassar graduate who in 1938, at the age of thirty, had been persuaded to break her visible links with the CPUSA in order to work for the NKVD. Every fortnight Bentley collected classified documents microfilmed by Silvermaster and his wife in her knitting bag. She reported not to Akhmerov himself but to another Soviet illegal in his residency, Jacob Golos (ZVUK—“Sound”), whom she knew as “Timmy.” Golos broke NKVD rules by seducing Bentley during a New York snowstorm. According to Bentley’s enthusiastic description of the seduction, she felt herself “float away into an ecstasy that seemed to have no beginning and no end.” Encouraged by Golos’s unprofessional example, Bentley mixed friendship and espionage in a way which would have horrified the Centre. Each Christmas she used NKVD funds to buy carefully chosen presents, ranging from whiskey to lingerie, for the agents in Silvermaster’s group. These, she said later, were “the good old days—the days when we worked together as good comrades.” 57

Like Zarubin’s, Akhmerov’s illegal residency recruited non-American as well as American agents. Among the most important was the British journalist and wartime intelligence officer Cedric Belfrage (codenamed CHARLIE), who joined British Security Coordination (BSC) in New York shortly after the United States entered the war. 58Directed by the SIS head of station, Sir William Stephenson, for much of the war, BSC handled intelligence liaison with the Americans on behalf of MI5 and SOE as well as SIS. 59Belfrage volunteered his services to Soviet intelligence. Like a number of other American agents in the United States, he made his initial approach to Earl Browder, who passed him on to Golos. 60Given the unprecedented number of wartime secrets exchanged by the British and American intelligence communities, Belfrage had access to an unusually wide range of intelligence.

The rolls of microfilm forwarded by Akhmerov’s illegal residency to the Centre via the legal residency in New York increased almost four-fold in the space of a year, from fifty-nine in 1942 to 211 in 1943. Zarubin none the less regarded Akhmerov’s refusal to have direct dealings with the CPUSA leadership and his roundabout methods of controlling the Silvermaster group as feeble and long-winded. Akhmerov himself, Zarubin complained, had a “dry and distrustful” manner—which may well have been true as far as his relations with Zarubin were concerned. Zarubin had a much higher opinion of Akhmerov’s wife, Helen Lowry, whom he regarded as more quick-witted, more business-like in manner, and—because of her American upbringing—better able to make direct contact with US agents. 61

THERE WAS THUS a breathtaking gulf between the intelligence supplied to Stalin on the United States and that available to Roosevelt on the Soviet Union. 62Whereas the Centre had penetrated every major branch of Roosevelt’s administration, OSS—like SIS—had not a single agent in Moscow. At the Tehran Conference of the Big Three in November 1943—the first time Stalin and Roosevelt had met—vastly superior intelligence gave Stalin a considerable negotiating advantage. Though there is no precise indication of what intelligence reports and documents were shown to Stalin before the summit, there can be no doubt that he was remarkably well briefed. He was almost certainly informed that Roosevelt had come to Tehran determined to do his utmost to reach agreement with Stalin—even at the cost of offending Churchill. FDR gave proof of his intentions as soon as he arrived. He declined Churchill’s proposal that they should meet privately before the conference began, but accepted Stalin’s pressing invitation that—allegedly on security grounds—he should stay at a building in the Soviet embassy compound rather than at the US legation. It seems not to have occurred to Roosevelt that the building was, inevitably, bugged, and that every word uttered by himself and his delegation would be recorded, transcribed and regularly reported to Stalin. 63