The Sword and the Shield

by Christopher Andrew

  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.

  57. Bentley, Out of Bondage, pp. 68-9, chs. 7, 8. Codenames from vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2 and VENONA decrypts. The sanitized SVR account of Golos’s career makes no reference to his sexual indiscretion. “Russian [intelligence] operatives,” it concludes, “will always honor and take pride in him.” Primakov et al., Ocherki Istorii Rossiyskoy Vneshnei Razvedki, vol. 3, ch. 16.

  58. vol. 6, ch. 12. The VENONA decrypts indicate that Belfrage was also codenamed UCN/9.

  59. On BSC, see Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, pp. 96, 102-3, 127-30.

  60. vol. 6, ch. 12. The KGB file noted by Mitrokhin confirms the main features of the account, contested by Belfrage during his lifetime, in Bentley, Out of Bondage, pp. 139-40—notably his espionage links with Golos and with V. J. Jerome, a close associate of Browder.

  61. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

  62. On the woeful limitations of the intelligence on the Soviet Union available to Roosevelt early in the war, see Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only, pp. 132-3.

  63. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB,
pp. 340-1; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, p. 23.

  64. vol. 6, ch. 12. Hopkins had been personally briefed by Hoover on Zarubin’s visit to Nelson (Benson and Warner (eds.), VENONA, document 9). Hoover would doubtless have been outraged had he known that Hopkins had informed the Soviet embassy.

  65. The source of the information on the talks between Roosevelt and Churchill was codenamed “19”—an example of the Centre’s confusing habit of sometimes recycling the same codename for different people. Laurence Duggan had formerly been codenamed “19,” but by now had the codename FRANK; he cannot, in any case, have provided this information. A detailed, meticulous and persuasive study by Eduard Mark concludes that it is “probable virtually to the point of certainty that Hopkins was 19.” Mark, “Venona’s Source 19 and the ‘Trident’ Conference of 1943.”

  66. Andrew, “Anglo-American-Soviet Intelligence Relations,” pp. 125-6. Crozier, Free Agent, pp. 1-2.

  67. Hopkin’s efforts to avoid US-Soviet friction also included securing the removal of officials he judged to be anti-Soviet: among them the US ambassador in Moscow, Laurence A. Steinhardt; the military attaché, Major Ivan D. Yeaton; and Loy W. Henderson, head of the Soviet desk in the State Department. When Soviet foreign minister Molotov visited Washington in May 1942, Hopkins took him aside and told him what to say to persuade Roosevelt of the need for an early second front in order to contradict contrary advice from the American military. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 297-300, 341; Mark, “Venona’s Source 19 and the ‘Trident’ Conference of 1943,” p. 20.

  68. Bohlen, Witness to History 1919-1969, p. 148.

  69. Dilks (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, OM, 1938-1945, p. 582.

  70. Cited by Kissinger, Diplomacy, p. 412. On relations between Churchill and Roosevelt at Tehran, see also Kimball, Forged in War, pp. 237-55.

  71. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 342.

  72. The use made by Stalin of intelligence from Britain during the Tehran Conference remains more problematic, given the Centre’s unwarranted suspicion at that time of its main British sources.

  73. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

  74. vol. 7, ch. 2, para. 2; appendix 3, n. 21.

  75. vol. 7, ch. 2, para. 5.

  76. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 15.

  77. Philby, My Silent War, pp. 49-50, 67-8.

  78. vol. 7, ch. 10, para. 5.

  79. Borovik, The Philby Files, pp. 196-7. On SIS’s lack of a Moscow station in the 1930s, see Andrew, Secret Service, p. 573.

  80. The text of the report was first published, along with other KGB documents on atomic espionage, in Voprossi Istorii Estestvoznania i Tekhniki (1992), no. 3. This issue was withdrawn shortly after publication, but the documents are reprinted in Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, appendix 2. Cf. Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 218.

  81. According to the minutes of the Scientific Advisory Committee, Cairncross briefly served as its joint secretary; SAC (DP)(41), CAB 90/8, PRO. In his memorably mendacious memoirs, Cairncross denied that he ever held this post. Even if he is correct in this instance (and Whitehall committee secretaries were, almost invariably, capable of ensuring that their names were correctly recorded), this would not have affected his access to SAC minutes since, by his own admission, he “had no difficulty in having access to the secret papers in Hankey’s office.” Cairncross, The Enigma Spy, pp. 9-10, 88-92.

  82. The revelation that Cairncross, thanks to his access to Scientific Advisory Committee papers, was the first to warn the Center of the plan to construct the atomic bomb first appeared in 1990 in Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, p. 321. Probably because Cairncross was then still alive, a series of KGB/SVR-sponsored publications suggested that the report of the Scientific Advisory Committee had come instead from Maclean. (See, e.g., Costello and Tsarev, Deadly Illusions, p. 218; Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 31, 60.) Following confirmation by Yuri Modin, who was given responsibility for Cairncross’s file in 1944 and became his controller in 1947, that the Scientific Advisory Committee report came from Cairncross, the SVR changed its tune. In 1998 it released documents from Cairncross’s file proving that he supplied the report and giving further details of his role as the first of the atom spies. West and Tsarev, The Crown Jewels, pp. 228-9, 234; Michael Smith, “The Humble Scot Who Rose to the Top—But Then Chose Treachery,” Daily Telegraph (January 12, 1998).

  83. The text of Beria’s report of March 1942, first published in Voprossi Istorii Estestvoznania i Tekhniki, 1992, no. 3, is reprinted in Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, appendix 2, pp. 439-41. On the background see Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, pp. 82-4.

  84. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, pp. 84-9.

  85. vol. 6, ch. 6. Roosevelt and Churchill agreed verbally on unrestricted exchange of information on the atomic project, but did not commit the agreement to writing. The Americans in charge of the MANHATTAN project afterwards claimed to be ignorant of the agreement. Not till the Quebec agreement of August 1943 was “full and effective collaboration” between Britain and the United States agreed in writing.

  86. vol. 6, ch. 6.

  87. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 85.

  88. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 321-2.

  89. West and Tsarev, Crown Jewels, pp. 231-3.

  90. Fuchs preferred meeting in London Underground stations. He later complained to Markus Wolf that Kremer’s habit of constantly looking over his shoulder to see if he was being followed “seemed to attract more attention to us than simply getting on with it.” Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 322-4; Wolf, Man without a Face, p. 230. The best biography of Fuchs is Williams, Klaus Fuchs, Atom Spy.

  91. The references to FIR in Mitrokhin’s notes, including her involvement with Fuchs, identify her as SONIA (vol. 7, ch. 14, item 17). She is not to be confused with a British NKGB agent also codenamed FIR, an official of the Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) recruited in China in 1943 (k-24,126).

  92. Werner, Sonya’s Report, pp. 250-3; Wolf, Man without a Face, p. 230.

  93. Wolf, Man without a Face, p. 229.

  94. vol. 7, ch. 14, item 17. It is just possible, though not probable, that an even stronger candidate for either of these titles is identified in files not seen by Mitrokhin. Like most, if not all, British agents recruited in the 1930s who were still active after the Second World War, Norwood had more than one codename in the course of her career. Though Mitrokhin’s notes refer to her only as HOLA, her codename in 1945, shortly after she returned from GRU to NKGB control, was RITA. Extracts from KGB files made available by the SVR to Weinstein and Vassiliev, though not mentioning Norwood by name, identify RITA as an employee of the Non-Ferrous Metals [Research] Association (Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, p. 194; cf. the reference to RITA in VENONA decrypts, 5th release, part 2, p. 247.)

  95. vol. 7, ch. 14, item 17.

  96. vol. 7, ch. 14, item 17.

  97. Samolis (ed.), Veterany Vneshnei Razvedki Rossii, pp. 59-61. Cf. vol. 6, ch. 8, part 1.

  98. vol. 6, ch. 6. In March 1943 Kurchatov sent similar reports to M. G. Pervukhin, Deputy Prime Minister and commissar of the chemical industry. The text, first published in Voprossi Istorii Estestvoznania i Tekhniki (1992), no. 3, is reprinted in translation in Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, appendix 2, pp. 446-53.

  99. vol. 6, ch. 6. Mitrokhin’s notes do not reveal the identity of MAR.

  100. VENONA decrypts, 1st release, pp. 1-4.

  101. vol. 6, ch. 6. Mitrokhin’s note does not identify the recipient of Kurchatov’s top secret report. Given its importance, however, it was probably addressed, like his report of March 7 (also quoted in vol. 6, ch. 6), to Beria. Cf. Kurchatov’s report to Pervukhin of July 3, 1943 in Sudoplatovs, Special Tasks, appendix 2, pp. 454-6.

  102. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 104.

  103. vol. 6, ch. 6.

  104. VENONA decrypts, 1st release, p. 5. Cf. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, p. 103.

  105. Holloway, Stalin and the Bo
mb, p. 103.

  106. There is some indication that later in 1944 FOGEL/PERS was providing intelligence from the Oak Ridge, Tennessee, laboratory of the MANHATTAN project. VENONA decrypts, 1st release, pp. 10, 29. Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, pp. 190-1; Albright and Kunstel, Bombshell, p. 319.

  107. Suggestions to the contrary derive chiefly from two sources: a fabricated version of the career of PERS (renamed PERSEUS), apparently devised by the SVR for purposes of mystification, perhaps to protect Theodore Hall (cf. Albright and Kunstel, Bombshell, p. 271; Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, pp. 190-1n.); and the fallible memory of Pavel Sudoplatov, far less reliable on atomic espionage than on the “special actions” to which he devoted most of his career (cf. Holloway, “Sources for Stalin and the Bomb”). The New York residency was dismayed to learn early in 1945 that FOGEL/PERS had declined an offer of employment as a construction engineer at Los Alamos, probably owing to a mixture of family pressures and fear of exposure. Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood, p. 192.

  108. vol. 6, ch. 6.

  109. vol. 8, ch. 12, para. 1.

  110. vol. 6, ch. 6.

  111. vol. 6, ch. 5, part 2.

  112. vol. 7, ch. 2, para. 4

  113. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 313-14. Pincher, Too Secret Too Long, p. 396. Early in the war, Philby had tried and failed to enter Bletchley Park.

  114. vol. 7, ch. 2, para. 3.

  115. Haslam, “Stalin’s Fears of a Separate Peace 1942,” pp. 97-9.

  116. Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, pp. 273-4, 305; Schmidt, “Der Hess-Flug und das Kabinet Churchill”; Schmidt, “The Marketing of Rudolf Hess.”

  117. Record of dinner conversation at the Kremlin, October 18, 1944, FO 800/414, PRO.