• The Comintern Apparatus (COMRAP). December 1944. This is a massive 577-page memorandum, bound in two thick packets, based on the initial probe beginning at the Berkeley Lab. It’s a compendium of about 400 names and several score organizations whose activities indicated to the FBI that they were part of the Soviet operation. The roster began with the core groups in and around the Lab, then expanded to include such agencies as Amtorg (a Moscow commercial front), the Soviet Purchasing Commission, the activities of Soviet agents Gaik Ovakimian and Arthur Adams, and many others like them.2
Among the cast of characters in COMRAP/1944 who would figure in later security wrangles were Oppenheimer, Gregory Silvermaster, Gerhart Eisler, Max Bedacht, Anna Louise Strong, Alfred and Martha Stern, Max and Grace Granich, Victoria Stone, Clarence Hiskey, Haakon Chevalier, Bruce Minton, and a host of others. Also of interest, this report discusses the wartime propaganda and influence operations then going on in U.S. media circles to promote the Communist cause in Yugoslavia and Poland. (Identified as the main pro-Communist gurus in these propaganda efforts were Louis Adamic and Prof. Oscar Lange, a pro-Red expatriate from Poland who would in due course return there.)
• Philip Jacob Jaffe, was; ETAL: Espionage C, May 11, 1945. This is an eighty-page report tracking the movements of Philip Jaffe, John Service, Andy Roth, Mark Gayn, and Emmanuel Larsen during a two-week period in April 1945, at the height of the Amerasia investigation. The memo is a summary of surveillance records concerning the people named, including the data-take from wiretaps, planted microphones, and physical observations. It is one of a large number of such reports in the Amerasia archive, totaling more than 12,000 pages of declassified Bureau records.
Though prepared strictly for the internal uses of the FBI and Department of Justice, and not for wider dissemination, this memo is of great interest for the lay researcher, as it embraces the critical three-day period in mid-April 1945 when Service suddenly appeared on the scene and began his relationship with Jaffe. Included are paraphrases of the first Jaffe-Service talks, the interactions of Jaffe and Roth, the contacts of Jaffe and Larsen, and an overview of Jaffe’s dealings with other key figures in the pro–Red China network.3
• Soviet Espionage in the United States, November 27, 1945. This is a remarkable report of fifty pages, single spaced, that ties together the Bentley data, COMRAP/CINRAD, Amerasia, information from defectors (including Victor Kravchenko and Whittaker Chambers), and other Bureau sources. It shows that the FBI, at the threshold of the Cold War, had a detailed, comprehensive understanding of Soviet-Communist operations in the United States. This memo would, for that reason, achieve somewhat legendary status, with parts of it read into the Congressional Record by then Rep. Richard Nixon (R-Calif.), cited in testimony before committees, and excerpted in congressional reports and hearings.4
Among the individuals who make an appearance in this survey are a number already mentioned: Oppenheimer, Silvermaster, Currie, Bransten-Kheifetz, Harry White, John Service, Sol Adler, Robert Miller, Harold Glasser, and many others. The report also sets forth in brief the case of Alger Hiss, based on the Chambers revelations. Thus, the FBI had a clear bead on Hiss, and passed along key information on him, almost three full years before the matter became a public scandal in the late summer and fall of 1948.
• “Nathan Gregory Silvermaster,” January 3, 1946. This 484-page report summarizes the Bentley-Gregory case as it stood approximately two months into the investigation. It contains a roster of the Bentley cases, describes efforts of the FBI to check out and follow up her statements, and capsules the results of its surveillance. In all, more than 100 people are mentioned, as are the complex interactions of Silvermaster, White, Maurice Halperin, Joseph Gregg, Victor Perlo, and others. Also revealed are the contacts of various Bentley people with Soviet officials and other Iron Curtain figures. Following is a sample:
…Joseph N. Gregg contacted [Fedor] Garanin [of the Soviet Embassy] while being surveilled by the Bureau. Gregg in turn is known to have been in contact with Peter C. Rhodes of OWI, now transferred to the State Department; Robert T. Miller III, State Department; and Maurice Halperin of the Office of Strategic Services and now with the State Department…all of whom were named by Bentley as elements in the espionage unit from which she received…information.5
• A memo devoted to Harry Dexter White and his associates in the Treasury Department, February 1, 1946. (Other versions of this memo also exist.) This twenty-eight-page, single-spaced report was prompted by the fact that White was getting ready to move up to a new post as U.S. executive director of the International Monetary Fund, itself in substantial measure a White creation. Hoover was concerned that in this global job White would “have the power to influence to a great degree deliberations on all international financial arrangements.”
This report not only sets forth details on White but traces his many connections with other Treasury staffers: Silvermaster, Ludwig Ullmann, Sol Adler, Harold Glasser, et al., making it clear that an extensive Red apparatus was at work inside the federal government, and had been for some time past. This memo on White—along with other Bureau reports about him—would draw public notice a few years later when a dispute arose between Eisenhower Attorney General Herbert Brownell and former President Truman as to whether relevant data on the case had been provided to the Truman White House.
• Underground Soviet Espionage Organization (NKVD) in Agencies of the United States Government, February 21, 1946.6 Anyone reading the summary of November 27 or the Silvermaster wrap-up could hardly have been in doubt about pro-Red penetration of the federal government, that it reached to very high levels, and that it posed a serious danger. However, just to make sure, the FBI produced this further update, running to 194 pages.
This document highlights more than forty principal suspects who were, or recently had been, in the federal government, and who were members or close contacts of the CINRAD/COMRAP-Amerasia-Bentley networks. It thus contains a recap of the usual suspects—Currie, Hiss, Miller, Victor Perlo, Duncan Lee, and some three dozen others. It also contains a notable statement in contrast to the charge that the Bureau was asleep at the wheel concerning the links of the CPUSA to Moscow:
Soviet espionage has one clear cut advantage over the practice of any other country within the borders of the United States. This advantage centers in the existence of an open and active Communist Party whose members are available for recruitment for any phase of activity desired…[such] recruitment is taken in every instance from individuals closely associated with the Communist Party, who in the main are native-born Americans or individuals not native-born but sufficiently familiar with the American way of life to avoid detection.
• The Comintern Apparatus (COMRAP), March 5, 1946 (summary). This is a boiled-down (thirty-five-page, single spaced) version of the COMRAP findings, updated and blended with the results of the Amerasia, Bentley, and other investigations, in the manner of the November 27, 1945, memo. Its brevity is a helpful feature, making it more manageable than other, more massive documents in the series. This was in fact the purpose of the format, as the summary was intended for the use of top officials unlikely to wade through hundreds of pages of information. (One of those who received this memo was Secretary of State James Byrnes.)7
Despite its compact form, this summary is fairly detailed, providing a good overview of the problem as the Bureau then perceived it. Included in its pages are background on Soviet operations and agents in the United States, suspects in OWI and OSS, updates on the Louise Bransten circle, intel on Jaffe and John Service, Bentley’s Silvermaster data, and so on. Also included are the Chambers revelations about Alger and Donald Hiss, Henry Collins, Lee Pressman, and Sol Adler. (The Adler-Service roommate connection is brought out in this memo.)
• Communist Infiltration of Radiation Laboratory (CINRAD), March 5, 1946 (summary). A companion memo to the COMRAP report of the same date, cast in the same format (thirty-three single-spaced pages) and for the identical purpose
: advising top officials of the problem in a condensed and manageable wrap-up that could be read at a single sitting.
This tracks key players in the atom project, explains the wartime division of security tasks between the Bureau and the Army, and shows the extent of the information the FBI had then put together. Among the major figures mentioned are Haakon Chevalier, Joseph Weinberg, Alan Nunn May, Clarence Hiskey, Bernard Peters, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. This report makes yet another reference to the fact that Oppenheimer was said by Communist bigwigs to be a secret party member who had to be inactive in its affairs because of the government work that he was doing.
• Underground Soviet Espionage Organization (NKVD), October 21, 1946. A 335-page report that traces the Gregory probe to the time of compilation. Reprising much of the material in the February version, it is more complete, including additional data on individual suspects and showing in greater detail the linkages among them. Noteworthy in this respect is the section on Mary Jane Keeney, discussing her contacts with Joseph Bernstein, David Wahl, Maurice Halperin, and others.
Also set forth in this report is information on such second-tier players as H. Bowen Smith, Duncan Lee, Ruth Rifkin, Cedric Belfrage, Bernard Redmont, Peter Rhodes, and others of like stature. This compilation would have been of special value to security agents, as it is tightly organized, with a full table of contents referring the reader to some fifty-six principal suspects, plus an index relating to hundreds of other people. Though there would be further updates later, this appears to have been the summa of the case while the investigation was actively in progress.
THIS survey of Bureau memos is by no means exhaustive. There were other summaries interspersed with these, not to mention that the FBI conducted thousands of investigations of federal workers under provisions of the Hatch Act, P.L. 135, and other statutes. The result of all this investigating and reporting was a huge mass of information concerning the general problem of pro-Red infiltration and innumerable individual suspects employed at federal agencies as of the early to middle 1940s.
Contrary to later aspersions, Hoover and his men weren’t compiling this enormous body of data for their own amusement or to have something to hold over people’s heads (though there was plenty of such material to work with). The point of all the summaries and updates was to convey the message as clearly and as fully as possible to top officials and trigger some kind of action. These efforts were especially diligent with respect to the Truman White House, which received a Niagara of memos on the major Bentley cases. Also, Hoover made special efforts to get information to Truman via George Allen, a well-known friend of the President who saw him informally and often. Far from withholding anything from Truman, Hoover was ringing alarm bells and supplying intel by every means at his disposal.
Following the Bentley disclosures, for instance, Hoover wasted no time in flagging them to the attention of the White House. Bentley made her first detailed statement to Bureau agents on November 7, 1945. Suggesting the urgency with which Hoover viewed the matter, the next day he had hand-delivered to Truman’s aide, Gen. Harry Vaughan, a number of the key details:
…information has been recently developed from a highly confidential source indicating that a number of persons employed by the government of the United States have been furnishing data and information to persons outside the Federal government, who are in turn transmitting this information to espionage agents of the Soviet government…The Bureau’s information at this time indicates that the following persons were participants in this operation or were utilized by principals in this ring for the purpose in which the Soviet is interested:
Dr. Gregory Silvermaster, a long time employee of the Department of Agriculture.
Harry Dexter White, Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury.
George Silverman, formerly employed by the Railroad Retirement Board, and now reportedly in the War Department.
Laughlin Currie, former Administrative Assistant to the late President Roosevelt.
Victor Perlow, formerly with the War Production Board and the Foreign Economic Administration.
Major Duncan Lee, Office of Strategic Services.
Julius Joseph, Office of Strategic Services.
Helen Tenney, Office of Strategic Services.
Maurice Halperin, Office of Strategic Services.
Charles Kramer, formerly associated with Senator Harley Kilgore.
Captain William Ludwig Ullman, United States Army Air Corps.8
Thereafter, Hoover would supply the White House with various of the reports detailed above, including the comprehensive summary of November 27, 1945, a condensed version of the same a few weeks later, the Harry White report, the still more comprehensive update of February 21, 1946, the COMRAP and CINRAD summaries of March 5, 1946, and so on in a continuing series. The same memos would be provided to the Attorney General and agencies where the suspects were working. Given this blizzard of Bureau paper, any half-sentient high official of the government had to know, by mid-1946, that a truly massive problem existed.
Reaction to these advices, however, was strangely torpid. After an early flicker of concern, the White House seemed especially inert—indeed, quite hostile to the revelations, and in virtually no case inclined to action. At agencies where the suspects worked, responses weren’t a great deal better. In some cases, the reports were simply ignored; in others, they provoked some initial interest, but not much beyond this; in still others, people who received the memos would say they never got them.
Considering the gravity of the problem, Hoover must have felt he was pushing on a string. A recurring subject in the Bureau files is the matter of reports to high officials that somehow got “lost.” That reports about such topics would be casually laid aside or “lost” suggests, at best, a thorough indifference to the scope and nature of the trouble. From Hoover’s comments it’s also apparent he suspected something worse—the passing around of the memos to people who weren’t supposed to have them.*65
Compounding these Bureau worries was the rankling memory of the Amerasia scandal. In that episode, elements in the Justice Department had fixed the case, then tried to blame failure of the prosecution on the FBI.†66 As other cases now came to public view, such scapegoating would become a familiar tactic. When charges against the Bentley-identified Red agent William Remington surfaced, Commerce Department officials told the press they hadn’t been properly briefed about the matter by the Bureau. This despite the innumerable reports on Remington that had been forwarded to Commerce.9
Another twist would be provided when the Victor Perlo case began filtering out to the press corps. In this instance, Treasury officials floated a story that they withheld action in the case at the request of the FBI in order to cooperate with its investigation. As the Bureau records make clear, no such request had been made by Hoover, who condemned the Treasury statements as just another attempt to pass the buck. Similar tales would later be told about Alger Hiss, Harry White, and others.
All this would reach a crescendo in the summer of 1948, when some of the loyalty/security cases that had been simmering beneath the surface would be brought out in congressional hearings. Most famously, the House Committee on Un-American Activities conducted its Hiss-Chambers investigation, in which the cases of Silvermaster, Miller, White, Duncan Lee, and others were aired as well. In all these cases, the relevant data had been in the possession of the Bureau—and of responsible higher-ups—for at least two years, and in some instances even longer.
Of course, the press and public knew nothing of this background and were shocked by the revelations of the Hill committees. Rumors and media accounts abounded that the FBI had been dozing, hadn’t managed to spot the suspects, hadn’t informed top officials of the danger—all this to the great annoyance of Hoover. Accordingly, he ordered the Bureau to prepare an elaborate summary of the reports and memos it had provided on the Bentley suspects. The preparation of such summaries was a common Bureau practice, and many such may be found in the F
OIA archives. This was but to be expected of the methodical Hoover, who wanted records on everything the FBI was doing and especially wanted to keep track of the ultrasecret data it was providing on its cases.
What was now prepared, however, was in a class by itself—the mother of all such compilations, showing in detail the huge number of reports that had been supplied about the original Bentley cases, the dates of the reports, and the people who received them. In compiling this prodigious record, the FBI went beyond the written word to make the matter graphic. It drew up a series of elaborate charts—one for each of the primary Bentley suspects in the federal workforce, plus a master chart showing the vast array of warnings that had gone forth from the Bureau. This shows that no fewer than 370 such reports had been supplied, in one fashion or another, to fourteen federal agencies. The bulk of these in turn had gone to the White House and Attorney General. (SeeChapter 12.)
From these charts, the proof that the FBI had exerted due diligence and then some in carrying out its investigative and reporting duties was evident at a glance. (Which perhaps explains the fact that this series of charts not only reposes in the general archives of the Bureau but was also in the Official and Confidential records kept by Hoover in his office.) In particular, the massive record of Bureau communications to the White House should put paid to the notion that Hoover would have withheld from Truman the data product from Venona.
A FLOOD OF REPORTS
This FBI master chart, held in J. Edgar Hoover’s personal files, shows the vast array of reports the Bureau sent to high U.S. officials in the early to mid-1940s about major suspects in the Bentley-Gregory investigation.
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